The staff of swissnex San Francisco predicts what will drive news, conversation, and business in 2015. Cast your vote for the trends most likely to come true.
Robots salesman.
They are already greeting and carrying out customer transactions in Palo Alto, California. We expect to see more of that in 2015.
The fight against hackers and malware heats up. Security and privacy become big business.
Flexible screens finally hit the market and open new design opportunities.
Micro-tasking becomes a buzzword.
A low-tech movement emerges, similar to the slow-food movement.
On a related note, books come back.
Virtual Reality in everyday life.
Oculus and Google will release VR headsets for consumers.
Personal online data “vaults" similar to banks arise.
Move beyond interdisciplinary toward antidisciplinary.
(as described by MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito).
Robotic journalism.
In March, 2014, the Los Angeles Times became the first paper to publish a story by the Quakebot algorithm, which takes US Geological Survey earthquake alert info and fills in a pre-written template. This will surely spread.
Falling tech stars.
Expect to see social turmoil and employee exploitation push back on early startup success in the tech sector.
Insurance companies will begin offering products suited to the sharing economy.
(e.g. incremental commercial coverage for Lyft and Uber drivers).
