Future of mobile technologies - will the apps survive? It they do, how could you make a career in this or build your first company?

Will the mobile apps survive? This is the biggest question which is making the experts busy now-a-days. Some experts believe that the current usage of apps, which generally give us information and let us get a service if and when we want it, will be irrelevant in the future when the internet will be all pervasive (exists everywhere) at an extremely high bandwidth (read speed). They predict that from a ‘pull’ based usage of mobile and web apps, we will live in a world where the web will be ‘push’ based, that is, the web will be all around us and coming to us irrespective of whether we are specifically looking for it. 

Example of such a future?

Well, suppose when we want to travel to a place within a city, we can open the ‘Uber’, ‘Ola’ or other cab/taxi app and book a cab. This is an example of a ‘pull’ based mobile web.

Now, imagine sometime in the future, you are standing at place wanting to go to another place. And before you have to open your mobile and open the app, the app itself switches on and asks you whether you would like to avail a cab arriving in 2 minutes to take you?

Imagine you are entering a shopping complex and an app is telling you that you need to buy a gift for your friend whose birthday falls on the next week.

Read this to get more of this http://readwrite.com/2015/03/13/mobile-future-notifications-not-apps

Some believe and predict otherwise

Well, many says many apps already have the ‘push’ capabilities and they will only get better over the time. Partially yes. We have the Apple Watch and quite a few apps which sort of ‘tells’ us or ‘push’ information to us before we ask them. 

 

You have to get hungry now, to know more and make a plan

See, there are theses and anti-theses. The best you can do to understand is to listen to experts, read, get exposure to multiple forums on mobile technologies and get experience to develop your own set of knowledge about the future.

At Careers21 Symposium, Krishna Tammireddy will tell you something about the future and what you can do best to avail of the opportunities. 

Check out what he is going to say. 

http://careers21.in/mobile-technologies-entrepreneurship/

Junk half or even more of what you are learning at your undergraduate college – avoid growing into a dinosaur

Although rather unfortunately, while the academic councils or boards of most of our Universities take years to change syllabus, technologies change with an ultra-rapid speed turning the life we have planned for completely over its head. We are living in a world where even the Moor’s Law which states that ‘computing power doubles every 2 years’ is going to be dead within a few years. And the future? Well, we are looking at three-dimensional carbon nanotube chips which can multiply the processing power of today’s average computers manifolds. Then there is a possibility that we will get the optical chips which may help you put a super computer inside your laptop.

We started talking about junking half or more of college education, so why this talk about computing power?

Because its ultra-relevant for you, something which your teachers are not telling you at your college. Either they are not aware or they are hiding it from you lest you stop going to classes altogether!

More computing power means better and more ‘intelligent’ computer

Take a few seconds and realise that technologies, in particular, information and computer technologies are driving our life, business and economies today. The more processing power we have in our computers, the more routine work could be done faster and better. The more computing power we have, the more will be the capacity of the computers to do ‘intelligent’ work. 

Computers becoming like humans

Ultimate what does human brain do? Processing information only. What else? And it’s really superfast. Recently some MIT researchers found that human brain can process information and identify an image in just 13 milliseconds. Yes, Sir. You read it right. One millisecond equals 1/1000 of a second.

So imagine a computer with such or closer to such speed. What do you get? You get incredible life changing technologies.

In computing capabilities, we are going there. Heard of cognitive computing?

Well, how do all these affect you?

Well, every field of work will be completely driven by information and computing technologies. The trend is already very clearly visible. You have better, faster and easier ways to communicate; your cars are driven by computer chips and we already have the driver-less cars being tested; your home appliances are driven by computer chips and soon there will be an IOT (Internet of Things); your entire office work could be packed inside your 1 TB laptop and soon work of large scale organisations will be all on the cloud; many routine medical surgeries are getting automated and even complex surgeries will become in the near future; you shop a lot online already and this will only grow. The possibilities are humongous.

A large part of manufacturing and manufacturing process control are driven by automation or information and computing technologies. Operations in manufacturing and service industries are completely driven by software. Research and discoveries in the field of Life Science, Medical Science and Physical Sciences are driven by information and computing technologies.

So, of course, anything and everything about technologies affect you very much, very hard.

Is your education built around technologies? Do you just ‘study’ instead of using the technologies which are used in your chosen field of work?

Whatever be your field of education and whatever future you may want to build for yourself, technologies or information and computing technologies precisely, must be at the core of your existence.

Your study content should be built around technologies and problem solving using technologies.

Unless you have learnt how various technologies are used in your chosen field of work and know the trends in technologies used in your field, you are merely studying for a degree which might be of no use.

(By learning I mean learning by doing or using the technologies, not by cramming notes. Hardly anything, which you learn by cramming, stays with you after a couple of years).

Technologies must be at the core of college education curriculum today. Or else you are growing into a dinosaur sooner or later.

Hey have you studied Geography without using sophisticated geospatial technologies? Have you studied Biological Sciences without learning Computing Biology?

Have you studied Marketing without learning the technologies used or about how real time and digital marketing are done? Have you studied Finance without learning to use financial analytic software? Have you studied Operations without using Operations Analytics and other computing technologies?

End state

I can go on asking. If your answers to the above and similar questions are not in the affirmatives, well, then pray to God for his mercy. Check your skin, you might already have started to grow into a Dino.May I have to day more or justify why should you junk half of more of your college education?

Artificial Intelligence can take away a lot of knowledge workers’ jobs tomorrow. Are you listening?

Although we are still quite far from mimicking human brain exactly in the laboratories, with all its cognitive abilities, analytical abilities and inter-play of complex emotions in decision making, there are quite a few remarkable progresses in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies which have potential to eradicate thousands, if not millions, of jobs worldwide.

Heard about Amelia? She’s just a software but looks good too!

For example IPSoft’s Amelia, an AI platform, when deployed, works as a cognitive knowledge worker alongside its human colleagues. Amelia works like a service desk employee who can read, listen to and understand what people ask. She can even understand what people are feeling when they ask for services.

Amelia could be deployed to a broad range of business functions. Using Amelia, it is possible to automate various business processes. She has cognitive abilities and learns like a human being. She can solve service requests or queries using her knowledge just as her human colleagues can do. Amelia is smart and intelligent. She can interact with humans as their feeling to deliver a satisfactory experience to those looking for services or calling her for some queries.

Meet IBM’s Watson (well, it’s still waiting to get human identity like Amelia)

IBM’s Watson is smart and intelligent. It can answer complex questions posed by a customer, can very quickly run through a large amount of structured and unstructured data and extract key information, learn patterns, analyse data for forecasting trends, and build insights, better and faster than humans in many cases.

Of course, Watson is a cognitive computing system which mimics certain functions of human brain. It uses natural language processing and machine learning to understand customer queries, analyse data and build insights from information. Watson can be used in a wide range of business functions and industries.

So, looks like a lot many knowledge workers such Analysts, Brand Managers, Customer Service Professionals and others going to lose their jobs in the future.

Well, may be or may not be.

You got to understand the future and decide for yourself.