4. Smart machines

While mobile personal assistants are a great way of illustrating contextually aware technology, they only scratch the surface of smart machine technologies. Smart machines are contextually aware, but they can also adapt to and learn from their surroundings autonomously.

Much closer to the present are businesses that are already using smart machines. In the future though, we’ll probably see imperceptibly small smart machines capable of adapting to their environments and, with the earliest examples of this technology still in the research phase.

5. 3D printing

When we talk about 3D printing’s impact on the world, we need to think about what kind of 3D printing we’re talking about. Bioprinting, consumer and enterprise 3D printing are all at different levels of maturity and the people interacting with them all have.

New industrial, biomedical and consumer applications will continue to demonstrate that 3D printing is a real, viable and cost-effective means to reduce costs through improved designs, streamlined prototyping and short-run manufacturing.

6. Context rich systems

Ubiquitous embedded intelligence combined with pervasive analytics will drive the development of systems that are alert to their surroundings.

Context-aware security is an early application of this new capability, but others will emerge. By understanding the context of a user request, applications can not only adjust their security response but also adjust how information is delivered to the user.