Top 5 Technology Trend in 2024 You Need to Get Ready For

We’ve arrived at the time of year when we speculate on what technology will bring us in 2024. Digital transformation is a continuous process, and the breakthrough trends that have made 2023 one of the most exciting years for innovation will continue to impact our world in a variety of new ways. 

Machine intelligence, the blurring of the real and virtual worlds, and directing the ongoing evolution of the internet will all have a profound impact on our lives. But perhaps most essential will be the hunt for ways to continue to expand and prosper while reducing our environmental impact – and possibly even reversing some of the damage done in the past. 

So here’s a rundown of these game-changing developments, as well as predictions for how they’ll affect life, society, and the planet. 

Generative AI – Everyday Automation 

The year 2023 saw the mainstreaming of generative AI. The year 2024 will be when the world realizes how really strong and valuable it can be. If you’re not a techie, the mere mention of artificial intelligence (AI) can make you apprehensive – if you’re not afraid about it taking over the globe or destroying the human race, you could be nervous about it stealing your job and making you redundant. 

However, when generative AI makes its way into more of the apps we use on a daily basis, from search engines to office software, design packages, and communication platforms, people will see its potential. When used correctly, it’s like having a super-smart personal assistant on hand all the time, making us more efficient, faster, more productive. 

Most significantly, by delegating our mundane brainwork – acquiring information, scheduling, monitoring compliance, gathering ideas, and structuring projects – to AIs, we will have more time to focus on our actually human abilities. Rather of programming robots, we will spend more time being creative, discovering new ideas and unique thinking, or engaging with humans. 

Phygital Convergence 

The real and the virtual are becoming increasingly inextricably linked. Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and the immersive internet are breaking down barriers between the physical world and the digital realms where we are spending an increasing amount of our time. We inhabit as digital avatars within virtual surroundings more than ever before. This is true for both work and play, where we communicate remotely via platforms such as Zoom, Teams, and Slack, and where online gaming and e-sports are more popular than ever. We utilize social apps such as TikTok and Instagram to build virtual places in which we share moments from our “real” lives, selected and filtered to develop digital personalities that become our virtual selves. 

This concept is growing across industries in the form of the digital twin – a virtual version of a real-world object, system, or process. This might be something as simple as a single component or something as big as a complete city or even an ecosystem. Importantly, the digital twin is created using data from its physical counterpart. Because of advances in genomics technology, we can now deconstruct the underlying core of life into digital code, which can then be modified and reconstructed in the actual world to build new treatments and eradicate diseases. 

In 2024, there will be less and less distinction between the real and virtual worlds. This means that the digital is growing more realistic, while the real is becoming as adaptable and pliable as the digital. 

Sustainable Technology 

As countries and corporations try to fulfill net-zero pledges, sustainable technology will continue to take center stage in 2024. At the same time, individuals will increasingly rely on technology to reduce their personal environmental impact. 

Sustainable technology involves more ecologically friendly ways of doing things we already do, such as electric automobiles, bicycles, and public transportation, which will continue to gain market share in 2024. It also covers innovative environmental solutions such as carbon capture and storage, as well as green and renewable energy technologies. As durability, recyclability, and reusability are integrated directly into products during the design stage, the circular economy will become an increasingly essential idea. Furthermore, the IT world will embrace ideas such as green cloud computing, where infrastructure and services emphasize the reduction of energy consumption and carbon emissions, and sustainable applications, which are software tools designed to help us live in a more environmentally responsible manner. 

The challenges that developers and users of sustainable technology will face in 2024 will include the need to develop ethical and sustainable methods for sourcing and extracting materials needed for manufacturing devices, infrastructure demands created by changing consumer habits such as the adoption of electric vehicles, and potential disparities in access to green alternatives between different geographic or socioeconomic groups. We will also become more aware of the presence of greenwashing – cosmetic efforts designed solely to generate positive PR for a specific technology. 

Cyber Resilience 

According to research, one out of every two organizations has been the victim of a successful cyberattack in the last three years, with the cost of these attacks to industry estimated to exceed $10 trillion by the end of 2024. In the face of this rapidly evolving threat, technology solutions that strengthen defenses and give us a fighting chance are high on every organization’s must-have list. 

However, cyber resilience extends beyond cyber security to include steps that can be implemented to recover and ensure continuity when defenses are penetrated or due to situations beyond our control. This could imply implementing remote working processes to ensure organizations can function when employees are unable to travel to central sites – a technology solution that is not generally thought of as a component of cyber security. 

Automation of cyber defense via AI and machine learning, integrated frameworks that combine security measures with continuity protocols, and knowledge of societal factors ranging from social engineering attacks to public relations firefighting are all critical components of any cyber resilience strategy. 

Cyber threats are becoming more complex, and competition to bring innovative solutions to market that leverage breakthrough technology like AI is heating up. This ensures that cyber resilience will become a more important trend in corporate and consumer technologies during 2024. 

Quantum Computing 

Quantum computers may perform massive amounts of computation at the same time by utilizing strange and amazing components of quantum physics such as quantum entanglement and superposition. This allows them to use quantum bits (qubits), which can exist in several states at the same time, rather than standard computer bits, which can only be in one of two states. 

Banks and financial services organizations are among the early investors in quantum technology, hoping to improve the capacity of AI systems built in recent years for fraud detection, risk management, and high-frequency trading. 

Quantum computing does not speed up every job we do with computers, but by 2024, we will begin to see benefits as it is applied across various compute-heavy fields such as drug discovery, genome sequencing, cryptography, meteorology, material science, optimization of complex systems such as traffic flow in large cities, and even the search for extraterrestrial life. 

These are all sectors with huge potential for tackling problems confronting us and our planet, and I’m really interested to see what advances may be made in the near future with the help of quantum computing.