What will the world–and my life–look like a year from now? Trying to predict what will happen over the next 12 months is a hard exercise. Is it like betting on which horse is going to win the race? Not exactly. It all comes down to deciding upon what future we’d like to create and investing our resources in that direction.
In the coming year, there are certain futuristic technologies that will begin the journey of realising their full potential. For instance, quantum computing is an area that has been waiting in the wings for a while. It’s not exactly something new.
The field of quantum computing emerged in the 1980s, when it was discovered that certain computational problems could be tackled more efficiently with quantum algorithms than with their classical counterparts.
While this capability has not yet realised its full potential, many are predicting that there will be an exponential rise in this industry. Why?
There was a surge in funding over the last two or three years in quantum computing startups: in both smaller businesses as well as the large tech firms. Quantum computing could contribute greatly to the fields of security, finance, military affairs and intelligence, drug design and discovery, aerospace designing and so on.
Quantum computers can also be used to improve the secure sharing of information. Another area where quantum computing is expected to help is the environment and keeping water clean with chemical sensors.
Climate change is already on everyone’s agenda–from large enterprise, to small business, to governments and to consumers. As a result, every company–and certainly every startup–will need to articulate what it is doing in the sustainability space. It may well be what actually redefines what it means to be a company in the coming years.
Climate change is already important to customers. It should therefore come as no surprise that policy, taxation, regulation will require that companies have climate change issues as one of their key metrics.
As to what will actually come to pass in a year… Well, your horse may well be as good as mine.
The Mercantile 