It’s difficult to represent visualise the wide range of core technologies and the way their interact with each other, but here are two representations anyway:

I’m going to drill a little deeper into examples of each of these below. At the moment these are broad headlines which may appear a bit cryptic: I’m aiming to provide more detail and discussion of each, and to add some other aspects not yet currently included:

Systems

Hardware and devices

Moore’s law continues
Optical computers
Neuromorphic chips
Nanonscale engineering, organic electronics and photovoltaics
Work on post Von Neumann architectures

Data platforms and analytics

The collection, processing and connection of large pools of data, feeding and powering AI and ML

Robotics

Industrial robots
Service robots – from cleaning the house to mowing the lawn, maintaining and mending pipes, wiring etc.
Drones
Swarm robotics

Quantum computing

A fundamental shift in computational capabilities, allowing us to solve complex problems that are slow or impossible on today’s computers

Internet of Things (IoT)

Smart homes and workplaces
Identity and control
APIs (system interfaces)

Security, Privacy and Cryptography

Immutable records / Merkle trees / encryption etc. (the need for forensic proof in an age of the fake, maintaining trust in historic records to prove they have not been tampered with or altered)
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs), homomorphic encryption
Identity (self-sovereign, Personal Data Stores and other approaches)
Risk resilience technology
Technologies for data veracity / authenticity
Post-quantum cryptography

Systems and Networking

5G and beyond (including other standards such as LTE)
Trends – decentralisation (group talk and peer-to-peer in 5G) and wireless mesh networks / move to the edge, more / better spectrum usage

Interfaces

Audio and Acoustics

Spatially augmented audio delivery
Removing sound from an environment
“every loudspeaker is also a microphone”: every surface is capable of 2-way interaction
Alex/Siri/Corona-like “smart assistant” capabilities embedded in environments rather than running as discrete standalone devices
Audio simulation (the ability to analyse voice characteristic and synthesise them)

Graphics and Multimedia

Holographics
Deepfake videos

Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Personalised micro-environments / instant personalisation (e.g. microclimate zones–cool/hot–in the same space, adjusting to an individual’s preferences), environments that know who’s present and adapt their responses accordingly, security measures (doors etc.) that adapt their responses based on the identity of who’s present
Full immersion augmented reality (AR) / virtual reality (VR)–including past of place / perceptual illusions / blurring of “reality”, “Jedi council” type presence and interaction
Brain controlled technology–primitive early gaming technology already around now can be potentially extrapolated to e.g. virtual telepathy / wider biometric technology and directions
Navigation through context (e.g. glancing)
Context aware smartphones–e.g. enter a space and learn all about it instantly
Instant translation (between languages), enabling conversation between people who speak different languages
Wearable technology including health tech from watches to glucose monitors

Biometrics

Realtime facial recognition
Realtime voice recognition and synthesis
Voice cloning
Behavioural analytics (online and in physical spaces)
Gait, heartbeat, etc.

Accessibility

Accessibility, inclusion, human rights
Ambient assistive technologies, particularly for an ageing population and those with disabilities

Theory

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

ML is a sub-domain of AI and both together continue to make progress in specific problem domains such as voice and face recognition, as well as largescale data pattern identification and analysis

Algorithms

Improvements to optimise computational efficiency and resources

Other technologies

Print and 3D

Materials – graphene, 3D printing / additive manufacturing, carbon nanotube, nanotech clothing and sensors, etc. Walls able to change colour, to display visuals and to respond to touch
“4D” printing (materials able to adapt and repair or obsolete themselves over time)

Power

Wireless electricity at scale enabling wireless / ambient charging / power (like WiFi today, but for power), battery technology breakthroughs

Medical, health and genomics

CRISPR gene editing, glucose monitors, prosthetics and embedded systems