Tuesday, January 16, 2018

The 100 Most Disruptive Technologies

From What's Next: Top Trends:

http://toptrends.nowandnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Screen-Shot-2018-01-09-at-14.40.37-1.png
Here, after what to me feels like an eternity, is my table of disruptive technologies, which is designed to make people think, at least periodically. If nothing else I’m sure it will be a catalyst for a few debates, not least some arguments about what is and isn’t included and where things are positioned in terms of impact and time.

The idea for this table initially came from stumbling upon a list of emerging technologies on Wikipedia. This felt fairly accurate, but also fairly dry and lifeless. Using this as a start point I did some desk research to identify candidate technologies and then spoke with colleagues and academics at Imperial College to validate my thinking. This was the easy bit. The tricky bit was deciding what not to include and how to rank each technology.
Here’s how it works.

The table consists of 100 potentially disruptive technologies, which are defined as technologies capable of significant social, economic or political upheaval.

One axis (Y Axis) ranks potential for disruption from high to low, while the other (X Axis) is time ranked from sooner to later, although importantly this does not relate to the invention of a technology, but rather its common use or ubiquity....MUCH MORE