2025 tech predictions both thrilling and scary

SAN FRANCISCO – What does 2025 look like from a tech point of view?

We humans will be walking, running, sleeping data streams pumping out constantly updated metrics that will be both safeguarded and valuable.

We'll do our jobs with the assistance of artificial intelligence to achieve better results faster.

And we'll leverage technological breakthroughs to create digital gatekeepers that tame the information-overload beast.

At least that's the idealized vision of our society 10 years down the road, according to a new report out Thursday from the Institute for the Future called Information Generation: Transforming the Future Today. The project was commissioned by cloud-storage company EMC, with quantitative research conducted by Vanson Bourne.

And if things don't go as planned and all our data are allowed to bolt out of the corral?

"Well that's the dance that's happening now," says Rachel Maguire, research director at Institute for the Future, a non-profit think tank. "We're in the age of omnipresence, so the question is, can we solve for the privacy issue so we and future generations can enjoy the benefits of technology?"

The institute's report identifies five "key directional shifts" in the coming decade.

The first is the information economy, which will find the data we generate from workouts and shopping sprees either being securely cached at our directive or else sold, donated or traded for financial or social gain.

Commerce in the data arena will be able to do everything from literally enrich us to helping society at large via the secure transfer of genomic data.

Related in many ways is the second shift, which will find a mushrooming army of connected devices – from cars to toasters – that will relay information and trends to each other and, via the Internet, the companies that manufacture them.

The advantages of such sentient hardware ranges from self-piloting or pilot-assisted cars that can better navigate their surroundings and avoid accidents to freezers that can automatically place orders for your dwindling stash of Rocky Road.

"All this data exhaust inherently generates privacy concerns and the need for protecting that data," says Maguire, adding that she's buoyed by the progress being made on a variety of fronts to protect personal data. "We must have ownership and oversight of our data."

The third big shift being made by the information generation – those growing up in the era of Internet ubiquity – is in the arena of augmented decision making.

"Tech leaders increasingly are saying that we're moving to a world where employees with smart decision-support systems in the workplace," says Maguire, citing the example of a doctor pulling from reams of research at the click of a mouse. "We're not talking about job displacement by AI (artificial intelligence) robots. We're talking about having workplace tools that let us do our jobs better."

Examples of this approach include Hong Kong's efficient subway system, which uses AI systems to run simulated train lines to determine the best possible timetable while saving the company nearly $1 million a year, she says.

The fourth coming shift is dubbed "multi-sensory communication," and is perhaps best exemplified by one feature of Apple Watch. Using a built-in tech that can tap its user on the wrist with a burst of energy, Watch is capable of relaying wearers' heartbeats from watch to watch. Maguire calls this just the tip of an iceberg of tech innovations whose mission is to save us from information overload.

"The next decade will find us receiving information in new ways, using new senses," she says, citing Marriott Hotels' Teleporter, a roving device that allows visitors to be whisked away to properties around the world thanks to the magic of Facebook-owned Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles.

"Some of this stuff might be clunky now, but early indications are that these breakthrough will become less contrived and more organic," she says. "Soon we simply won't be just taking things in through screens."

The last shift circles back to the first. Under the heading "privacy-enhancing tech" are predictions of cryptographic breakthroughs that hopefully will deliver us from a reality where it seems every major outfit is being hacked on an almost daily basis.

Of all the shifts, however, this one clearly deserves the most attention. Without encrypted and secure data transfer, our digital lives will fast become an open book.

Says Maguire: "The question we need to keep asking is, simply, what is technology setting us up for over the longer term?"