Driverless cars, speaking homes and facial recognition technology: just a few of the innovations people believe will be commonplace in 2025.
McCafee Canada just released results of a new survey asking Canadians about how they envision the future of technology.
Here’s some of the results:
Everyone will have a smart watch
A whopping 77 per cent of respondents believe the smart watch will be the dominant device in ten years, knocking the ubiquitous smart phone off its perch.
Cloud computing will be everywhere
Cloud computing will also be big according to technology consultant Jason Offet: “Things like Apple’s iCloud service or Google’s various cloud services, those are basically the glue that will put all these things together.”
Cloud computing is the remote storage of files that allows users to save, edit and view them from multiple devices.
Face, voice, fingerprint recognition
Two out of three believe they’ll have access to work data through facial or voice recognition, and nearly a quarter of those surveyed think they’ll be able to pay for things with fingerprints.
“I think the rise in biometrics is in no way going to slow down in the next ten years. As we begin to learn more about what our bodies are telling us,” says Trevor Haldenby, a futurist with The Mission Business.
Devices that track your health and personal information
According to the survey 64 per cent believe wearable devices will send health information directly to doctors. More than half (51 per cent) believe our houses will be able to speak to us, and 70 per cent expect to use solar panels as their main source of energy.
The future holds both convenience and vulnerability according to technology experts who focus on identity theft and cyber crime. Dr. Avner Levin is the director at the Ryerson Privacy and Cyber Crime Institute and says the evolution of technology also provides opportunities for criminals.
“What we need to be more concerned about is what’s going to happen to our biometric information and how we’re going to protect it and make sure it’s not hacked or used for criminal purposes,” he said.
Ensuring the safe storage of personal information and large troves of data should be the responsibility of companies says Levin.
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