Future shock: Predicting future technologies and their impact

15th June 2020

Emerging technology trends

At Roke we often get called upon to help customers second guess what kind of technologies are around the corner and how they might impact upon their organisations, missions and lives.

Rather than resort to a whiteboard every time, we put a resource together that I call Future Shock (after the Alvin Toffler book published in 1970). It’s a semi-structured map of technologies and derivative technologies displayed as a large map. It’s not definitive; the terms of art can change and what seems like a future technology can rapidly become something we take for granted.

A thought-provoking map

Essentially it’s an ‘ideation’ map (a hateful term) which can be used to provoke ideas and thoughts about the impact of a technology on an organisation. You can have some fun by randomly picking out subjects and talking them through or, slightly more challenging, pick two subjects and think about how they might interact.

We have many customers who have the full size poster stuck on their walls. If it starts an interesting conversation, then it’s worked.