More than a month has passed quietly in 2016. In a field of technology where everything is changing rapidly, it is easy to forget the past - for example, 2014 and 2015 were regarded as the first year by many technology industries, and now these technologies are entering a new year, they may It no longer surprises you (a classic definition of technology is: all the new inventions after your birth), but it is evolving at its own pace. As the Chinese New Year approaches, let’s take a look at areas that are likely to see breakthrough innovations this year, such as autonomous driving, virtual reality, wearables and robotic services. Well, as a technology columnist said, it is not difficult to judge the short-term development of a technology, because as Kevin Kelly said, technology is evolving in a "topia" way, and technology practitioners need to do is just follow the trend for.
Unmanned driving: technology update, yet to be popularized
Let’s start with the unmanned driving that frequently made headlines in technology last year.
To be sure, in 2016—and in the years to come, this comprehensive technology will mature. Players in this field are also making frequent technological updates. For example, Google, a bigger player, recently released a report saying that the roof of its driverless car has just been equipped with the latest version of lidar sensors to provide perfect weather information, so that the car can be They are able to automatically stop in the event of severe storms and other weather, and they are also collecting all kinds of weather data, so that self-driving cars can cope with extreme weather such as hail and blizzard.
In addition, deep learning may have more grafts with autonomous driving. At the end of last year, researchers at the University of Cambridge used deep learning to develop two systems that allow cars to "see the road": one is called SegNet, which can take pictures of road conditions in real time and classify objects on the road into 12 categories, such as road surfaces. , road signs, sidewalk construction, can greatly reduce the cost of today's expensive sensors; another system can identify the user's location and direction when GPS fails. Of course, the direction of all technological progress is undoubtedly safer - in the foreseeable future, even under the helpless fact that "90% of traffic accidents are caused by human errors", the conclusion that driverless cars are safer will gradually become a consensus.
On the other hand, as a market that is still very open, there may be more players this year - you know, the major traditional car brands have long announced that they will launch their own self-driving cars (or at least self-driving) within a few years. transition). In response, there will be more new forces around the software side of the industry, and players like BlackBerry will better fill this market.
Ultimately, though, human transportation is a complex system, destined to involve a lot of non-technical issues, so the ethical controversies that come with it will continue—but the trend cannot be violated. Not long ago, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation on behalf of the Obama administration Announced plans to spend nearly $4 billion over the next 10 years on testing and developing regulations for self-driving cars to make them available in states.
The popularity of driverless cars is not in 2016, but it is only a matter of time. As Ray Kurzweil puts it: "When examining the impact of technology, people usually go through three stages: first, wonder and awe, recognizing the ability of technology to solve a chronic disease in human society for many years; and then fear, because these technologies will bring new threats; from there, we hope that what follows is finding a viable, responsible course, setting a prudent course that can both realize the potential of the technology and keep the threat manageable.”
Virtual reality: Will mobile phones be evangelists?
Although the technology has been more objectively understood after the ebb and flow of virtual reality in the 1990s, you have to admit it is one step closer to mainstream devices. The Oculus Rift, Sony Playstation VR and HTC Vive are all listed together, making VR fans yearn for 2016.
There is no doubt that "VR + other industries" can even be called a technical branch of "Internet++". In the new year, its application scenarios will extend to various fields: online conferences, media presentations, live broadcasts, medicine and other difficult professions Training, fitness, news, education, travel... It might be said that humans have only the limit of imagination when it comes to grafting on VR.
Of course, for most ordinary users, "content is king" is always true. In fact, the development of VR is quite similar to that of movies. The demos on the earliest VR are very similar to "A Train Arrives" (only 50 seconds), one of the earliest modern movies of mankind in 1895. Fortunately, right now, some talent is developing games for devices like the Oculus Rift, so there are many optimists who believe that VR will have a killer game in 2016. As Bruce Wooden, the main initiator of "Virtual Reality in Silicon Valley" in the United States, said: "Male large PC gamers - especially those with gaming computers and three monitors will be the first consumers to buy virtual reality devices. "
However, in addition to content, equipment shortcomings brought about by high costs are also the bottleneck restricting the development of VR at this stage. Not long ago, Nvidia predicted that in 2016, only about 13 million PCs will have the powerful graphics processing capabilities to support VR devices, which is less than 1% of the world's PCs. So overall, virtual reality has a long way to go if it wants to become the next generation of large-scale computer platforms for human beings.
Of course, at least in 2016, VR devices have a near-immediate solution: the phone. According to industry statistics and analysis company SuperData, people will spend $5.1 billion on VR software and hardware this year, but most of it will be spent on "simple devices" that rely on smartphones such as Google Cardboard. The odds are that smartphones will be the evangelist for VR from early adopters to widespread adoption in the next few years.
Well, if the development of virtual reality is related to participating in the construction of human consciousness, intertwined with neurons, and greatly enriching human experience, then from today's perspective, virtual reality is still on the eve of dawn - see how it always matches The pornographic content of "tech pioneers" is bound together.
Wearables that are about to "disappear"
British investment bank GP Bullhound recently released its top ten forecasts for technology development trends in 2016, one of which is: the "quantified self" movement represented by digital fitness and wearable technology, in mobile devices, big data, social media. Catalyzed, in the context of the public's increasing emphasis on their own health, this year will move from the niche to the mainstream.
You have to admit that in 2015, wearables were still in their infancy, and were just monitoring a small number of basic vital signs—almost certainly, in terms of industry depth, along with the relative maturity of wearable medical products, in 2016 It will enhance the technical content of the entire industry, in other words, start to collect more data with clinical value, to a certain extent, get rid of the social value data such as the number of steps. For example, Google is developing a portable tool for measuring blood sugar, and the latest spy photos of Samsung watches also design the dial to be detachable and attached to the chest, which can be used alone like a stethoscope. In addition, the upgrade of chips that can monitor more dimensions is also inevitable. For example, Samsung recently announced that it will release the industry's bio-processor "Bio-Processor", which can monitor body fat, skeletal muscle mass, skin temperature and skin temperature. stress condition.
In fact, about the trend of wearable devices in 2016, I would like to talk about its horizontal grafting with other industries.
Personally, I've always been skeptical of putting a wristband on my wrist just to monitor data. In fact, some industry insiders have pointed out that wearables should not be a separate category, so there is a possibility that in 2016, the word "wearable" will be accompanied by redundancy, showing a greater sense of powerlessness. The online edition of Wired magazine also wrote not long ago that the term "wearable device" will gradually fade out, and everyday clothing and supplies with integrated technology elements will be ubiquitous, "Just look down at all the things you are wearing. Everything, we can know the future of wearable devices.”
Well, technology doesn't like to appear in a disturbing way. Although the wearable devices in this world have been better looking in the past year, in a sense, they are still beautiful and "obtrusive". For the foreseeable future, data collectors—— Those more dexterous sensors will be integrated into everything that already "exists": in clothes, in socks, in shoes, in jewelry (Swarovski is a model)... Front-end data collection will present a great enrichment of categories, As for the unification of more important standards and formats in the future, as well as the derivative services after integrating data (otherwise, why are they collected?), maybe that is what technology giants should do.
In short, in 2016, "wearable" may choose to hide and gradually disappear.
Pioneers of Robotic Services
First of all, it must be clearly defined. The robots here do not refer to the artificial intelligence in "The Machine Butler" and "Robot and Frank" - they will not appear in 2016. After all, human beings are talking about strong artificial intelligence when the cognition of the brain is chaotic. Somewhat vague. For the same reason, perhaps the most primitive version of the robot in the movie-the emotional robot represented by Japan's SoftBank's Pepper, although intuitively sci-fi, at least at this stage is still a high-priced plaything.
In fact, "robots" are very close to humans, but they may not be able to see them. Recently, the well-known Taiwanese host Chen Wenqian interviewed Clayton Christensen, the author of "The Innovator's Dilemma" - the latter is known as the "Master of Disruptive Innovation" and can be regarded as the world's best talker about innovation candidate. Christensen said that he found that whether it is in the United States or China, a "private secretarial service" is gradually emerging. For example, you can ask it "I want to go to XX for dinner, do you have any recommendations?" "I need four people. Seats" ... it quickly completes it for you, at least in Christensen's view, compared to Uber's efficient resource allocation tool, "this is a disruptive innovation."
Christensen is right. Last year, whether it was the "pure manual service" startups Magic and Operator, or the "AI+artificial" Facebook M, or the secret of artificial intelligence technology, they all extended their tentacles to the same field: private secretary. Unlike earlier Siri, they're based on real-world "searches."
Take the Facebook M service, for example, users send text to it, it can help you complete services such as shopping and ordering, and when you make a request to it, the system's answer will be reviewed by a human "trainer" hired by Facebook to decide. Whether more specific work needs to be done. It is conceivable that although Facebook, which has more than 700 million users, needs an extremely large team, M service can undoubtedly help it complete the closed loop of online-to-offline services, and even directly make it a physical and e-commerce portal. Compared with M, which can also help users order meals, buy movie tickets and other services, the secret is more emphasis on technology. It can understand human natural language, and can conduct multiple rounds of dialogue through multimodal interaction (text, pictures, voice), and after many services, it will gradually understand the personalized needs of users - you know, it is also the same as booking air tickets, Each user has different requirements for flight, price and class.
This "disruptive innovation" in Christensen's eyes has huge room for imagination in China. Everyone knows that O2O is expected to become a trillion-dollar market in the future. Robin Li has already stated that he will connect 3,600 lines, achieve full coverage of service categories, and create an open ecological platform. It is understood that Baidu has recently launched a month-long campaign of “Picing a happy face and grabbing 6 billion lucky bags” in order to meet the demands of users to grab red envelopes during the Spring Festival. And Dubi is further testing the water O2O, close to users, relying on powerful intelligent interactive technology, allowing ordinary users to experience intimate dialogue and interaction while grabbing red envelopes. During the event from January 27th to February 22nd, users can evoke Dubi through the voice search of mobile phone Baidu or directly download the Dubi APP, and after uploading a group photo with relatives and friends or a photo with the word "Fu", that is, Get bonuses.
So far, Dubi has successfully integrated the three major Baidu portals of mobile phone Baidu, Baidu Maps, and Baidu Nuomi to build a relatively complete ecological closed loop. It is conceivable that Dumi may provide a complete set of traffic import and back-end support for offline merchants and O2O service access. In the future, if it can be embedded in the life process of more users, then at least theoretically, Baidu can open up various O2O products through one portal.
Christensen attaches so much importance to the deeper reason of private secretary, perhaps the "post-APP era" represented by it has quietly arrived. In fact, many scholars have predicted that a large number of high-frequency or low-frequency apps desperately squeeze into your mobile phone screen is not what the future will look like. Although "APP" will not come in 2016, I believe you, like me, yearn for the super virtual assistant in the movie "Her".
Well, the future mobile terminal may be a "unity", its shape? Just like Lucy's declaration at the end of "Super Body": I will be everywhere.
