Future technologies: What lies ahead

In January I presented a session on 'What's hot and what's not in learning and development' for Learning Technologies in London. The annual event always has a slot for future trends in technology, which in the past has featured great thinkers such as Ray Kurzweil and Brian Solis, and futurists Gerd Leonhard and Rudy de Waele. Everyone seems to be interested in the future, and while we cannot predict it with any great accuracy, we know what the trends are and can follow them to see where they might lead. In this session I cover a range of new and emerging technologies such as voice controlled interfaces and gestural computing, the Internet of Things (pervasive computing), wearable technologies and artificial intelligence and speculate on what their impact might be on workbased learning. I also outline some of the major trends we should look out for in the next decade, including an increase in the emphasis on personalised learning, social networking and untethered (mobile) learning. Here's the video of the session, which also features Duke CE's Tony O'Driscoll.



Photo by Jon Rawlinson on Wikimedia Commons


Future technologies: What lies ahead by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.