philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The IEEE Computer Society today unveiled its Top 9 Technology Trends for 2016. According to Dejan Milojicic, past president, IEEE Computer Society, "Some of these trends will come to fruition in 2016, while others reach critical points in development during this year. You'll notice that all of the trends interlock, many of them depending on the advancement of other technologies in order to move forward.

The nine technology trends to watch in 2016 are –

1. 5G – Promising speeds beyond anything seen today, (7.5 Gbps?), 5D will deliver everything from interactive automobiles and super gaming to the industrial Internet of Things.
2. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality – 2016 promises to be the tipping point, as VR technologies reach a critical mass of functionality, reliability, ease of use, affordability, and availability. At the same time, the use of augmented reality (AR) is expanding with the help of advanced AR technology (e.g., adding computer vision and object recognition).
3. Nonvolatile Memory – Computer memory that retrieves information even after being turned off and back on has been used for secondary storage.   In 2016 huge strides will allow smaller devices to store more data and large devices to store huge amounts of information.
4. Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) – Also used as the Internet of Things (IoT), CPS are smart systems that will operate with high levels of reliability, safety, security, and usability since they must meet the rapidly growing demand for applications such as the smart grid, the next generation air transportation system, intelligent transportation systems, smart medical technologies, smart buildings, and smart manufacturing.
5. Data Science – A data scientist is an individual with the curiosity and training to extract meaning from big data, determining trends, buying insights, connections, patterns, and more. Frequently, data scientists are mathematics and statistics experts. People looking for assured employment in 2016 and way beyond should seek out these opportunities.
6. Capability-based Security – Hardware capability-based security will provide a finer grain protection and defend against many of the attacks that today are successful.
7. Advanced Machine Learning – Rather than following strict program guidelines, machine learning systems build a model based on examples and then make predictions and decisions based on data. They "learn."
8. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) – With NFV, cloud services will be provided to users at a greatly reduced price, with greater convenience and reliability by telecommunications companies with their standard communication services.
9. Containers – Containers provide the necessary computing resources to run an application as if it is the only application running in the operating system – in other words, with a guarantee of no conflicts with other application containers running on the same machine. The gating item is security, which must be improved to make the promise of containers a reality.