In a rapidly-developing disruptive environment, all observations are transient.
This is the time of year pundits, analysts, editors, and others of a speculative stripe wax poetic about the past year. We gaze into our crystal balls, or our navels, and pull out observations and speculations, hopefully useful and insightful, and maybe even a little entertaining. As Einstein famously said, reality is based up on the point of view of the observer, so here are some thoughts on the year that was from an electronic engineering perspective.
Pervasive computing
Let’s just say that this rubric encompasses pretty much everything that’s converging today, from the Internet of Things (IoT), to Industry 4.0, to Smart Cities, autonomous cars, Cloud-enabled telemedicine, combat robots, and everything in between. Let’s just say we are migrating to a point where everything that draws power will one day not just be connected, but “smart”.
Pervasive computing means far more than just a computer in every hand and on every convenient surface. It means the interwoven interactions between all of these devices in the Cloud, and the users involved. Our society is only just now coming to grips with an environment where data and connectivity are as important as food, clothing, and shelter.
Edge Computing
2020 will be in that narrow band of years later pundits will say when Edge Computing arrived. However, the migration toward applying more computing power to the point of application has been a cyclic evolutionary process using the core technologies at hand. From telephone switching to thin-client computing, the pressure to move the power to the edge of the system fabric is why the industry is again in the process of point-of-focus change.
This ties into the earlier point about ubiquitous computing, as a decentralized node-based infrastructure is more robust, flexible, and functional than a centrally-oriented network. In order to have a computer everywhere, someone needs a reason to put one there, and Edge Computing is both the reason and the method. Once every powered device is a little smart, they can leverage efficiencies of operation that could only be dreamt of previously.
Ubiquitous communications (Cloud 2.0)
It is one thing to have a lot of intelligent devices out there in the world communicating with each other, it is another thing to have them communicate with one another and us in an interactive real-time fashion. The ability to have instantaneous understandable actionable information about a product in use is actually a new thing, taking us so far past gauges and indicators that those once-vital devices are now used to indicate steampunk contraptions.
Being able to communicate with one another while using our sophisticated electronic tools together is a force-multiplier never seen before in animals more sophisticated than hive minds like ants and bees. The COVID-19 pandemic is only bringing to a point the recent convergence of tools and software for team collaboration that has been going on for quite some time. 2020 will be seen as the year it had to be made to work, leapfrogging the several years of development that should have lain ahead for that fledgling industry.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is where all of this is supposed to become what science fiction writers have been promising for decades, and we’ll have to fight the AI killer robots as they try to build a time machine to kill the mother of the guy who’s organizing the human defense. Smart intelligent systems will surpass humans in the power of thought, and have decided to destroy their masters, just as the Simpsons predicted.
In this case, the reality will be a little different. What AI means for the foreseeable future has more to do with machine learning and self-reinforcing logarithms to optimize and automate complex yet predictable processes. What will happen is that AI will empower application spaces like Edge Computing and Industry 4.0 (5.0?) in a significant fashion.
