While I’m not a big advocate of following the fads, staying on top of the technological advances is another matter. Clearfield’s success is built on harnessing that future thinking and the power of what’s possible.

Under a photo of Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent, Forbes ran a column in December called “Technologies of the Future: 5 Trends to Watch for 2013.”

The predictions are really those of David Alan Grier, an associate professor of international science and technology policy and international affairs at George Washington University.

1. New companies and applications will bring the long-held vision of the internet of Things (IoT) closer to reality. (The story predicts that IoT could be the most disruptive technology since the advent of the web, and may result in up to 100 billion Internet-connected objects by 2020.)
2. Visualization and analytics will help solve the challenges of big data. (Professor Grier notes that the ability to make timely decisions based on available data is crucial to business success, clinical treatments, cyber and national security, and disaster management. However, the challenge is that most data is simply too large and often has too short a lifespan.)
3. Enterprises will deploy hybrid clouds and consumers will embrace personal clouds. (With the growth of services exceeding predictions, cloud computing will gravitate even further into the enterprise with hybrid clouds. He predicts that consumers will further embrace personal clouds.)
4. The battle over Internet censorship and control will reach new heights. (We’re cautioned to expect to see more Internet battles for technical, social and political control in the form of Internet filtering versus circumvention, surveillance versus anonymization, denial-of-service attacks and intrusion attempts versus protection mechanisms, and on- and offline persecution and defense of online activists.)
5. Researchers and companies will develop new tools and approaches to help unleash the power of multicore computing. (Prof. Grier says as we enter the parallel processing era, learning to interact with multicore technology is a critical priority. In 2013, researchers will be focusing on approaches to providing scalable, shared memory at the on-chip level, which is critical in a future where individual nodes will have on the order of 1,000 cores each, unleashing the past processing power of multicore for both consumers and enterprises.)

While much of this technological language is outside of my wheelhouse, I’ll defer to Professor Grier on these matters. Besides, any trends story featuring a photo of Carnac the Magnifient has got my attention.

For the full story, go to: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/12/07/technologies-of-the-future-5-trends-to-watch-for-2013/