It is never easy to guess what things will be like in the future, but some things are more foreseeable than others. Let’s try to imagine how stuff will be like in 5 years from now. You might think that 5 years is far in the future. For our brains 5 years into the future always seems like a much longer time span than 5 years into the past. Time will pass faster than you think and then you will catch yourself saying “remember when…”.
Remember when we used credit cards to pay.
Today, most people carry around 4-5 different credit cards in their wallet. But more and more, there is the possibility to pay using the smartphone. Start-ups like Square or existing players like Google with Google Wallet or PayPal are pioneering in this area, and in the USA major chains like Starbucks are accepting mobile payments already. In the same time, the start-up Coin is trying to exchange all your credit cards by one plastic card in the size of a credit card, that let’s you add all your credit cards and when paying, just select your desired credit card and swipe it through the reader – and done.
Remember when we used to have 3 different devices to work.
Nowadays everyone has a smartphone, a tablet, and a laptop. You use your laptop at work, your smartphone on the go and your tablet when at home watching TV. In the next couple of years, these three devices are going to merge. The signs are already here: smartphones and tablets merge into Phablets, tablet sales are overtaking laptop sales. Software giant Ubuntu raised a record $12.8 million for its 3 in 1 smartphone Ubuntu Edge. And Google announced the Chromephone for this or next year. The merge is inevitable and even if you cannot imagine it today, in 5 years you will have one device that you will use to surf when on the way to work, on your work place you will just plug it into your docking station and continue working on your big screen, and when at home you will use it to browse through Facebook when watching TV.
Remember when people thought electric cars are never going to happen.
Electric cars are not new. They have been around a couple of decades. But only with the vision and dedication of Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors did they become visible to the general public and a threat to the automobile industry, that hasn’t seen real innovation since Henry Ford. There are multiple developments impacting this trend. Surely, declining battery costs is one them. Every year, the costs for lithium-ion batteries (for example used in the new Tesla Model S and other electric cars) has been significantly decreasing year over year.
Further reason for the rise of e-cars is that manufacturers have understood that customers seek the same or improved driving experience also in electric cars. Everyone who has driven a Tesla Model S knows what I am talking about. The increasing efficiency of batteries allowing for larger driving ranges, new incentives by governments for electric car owners and the emerging charging infrastructure will only lead to more electric cars built and bought in the future. Oh, and let’s not forget the increasing price and scarcity of oil that fuels the utmost inefficient combustion engine today.
What do you think? What other technologies will change the way we live, work and communicate in the future?
