I am doing a Master of Business Informatics at the University of Canberra and next week I have to do a 5min semi-formal presentation on what the IT-enabled future might look like.

Adding my own speculation to research I have been doing, this is what I came up with:

I believe the trends we are seeing today are related, and together they are building up to something significant. I believe one day they will converge to have a major impact on the way we use technology. These trends are:

• Social computing: at its heart, this is about the collective intelligence. Organisations are yet to fully leverage this for their internal business.
• IPv6: I refer to this as device connectivity. This will give us many more connected devices, with new applications, and more importantly new ways of capturing, using and exchanging data.
• Cloud computing & increasing bandwidth: together these mean processing power. The subtle significance here, I believe, is that they give rise to the thin client where apps are hosted remotely and data are stored remotely. This could increase opportunities for data sharing, process integration and standardisation.
• Mobile computing: An extension of the thin client. I call this accessibility as it allows people to access information and services from anywhere – at anytime.
• Natural user interface: Good examples being MS Surface and XBox Kinect. This will allow us to be more expressive when using technology.

So what would happen if collective intelligence, device connectivity, processing power, accessibility and expressive start to converge? I believe they will give rise to 2 things:

• Immersive computing: where computing will be more natural and pervasive throughout our daily life
• Hyper-connectivity: where we, more than ever, will be connected to each other, information and services.