The way forward for ​technology..​.

What do you think is the way forward for technology?

• General artificial intelligence?
• Industrial automation?
• HCI/cybernetics?
• Something else?

What effect do you think the progression of technology will have the society as we know it?

I think information technology is where the future lies. By that I don't mean the nonsense they teach in school and call "IT", I mean technology involved in the use/transmission of information and the application of that technology to other disciplines.

For instance it is currently possible to perform a full text search of (almost) all the scientific research ever published (http://wokinfo.com/ being an example of such a service) but imagine being able to sort and analyse all that data automatically (e.g. http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/). Of course there are more nefarious uses for such technology too (eg. the UK CCDP). There are whole fields of research specifically about the application of computer science techniques to problems in other discipllines (look up cheminformatics, bioinformatics on wikipedia).

As far as the end users are concerned I think we'll see technology that takes a back seat. People increasingly want their technology to just work - it's not about the amazing smartphone with a really fast processor, high res. screen and good data connection - it's about what people do with it. The technology itself gets in the way so the good technology will remain hidden, facilitating, not being facilitated.

I think the changes will be incremental and we won't notice them at the time, but they will be quick. When I started my degree (4 years ago) there was no Wolfram Alpha, many of our lecturers did not use the university VLE, we had pigeonholes (actually, I think we still do...), we never submitted coursework online. I could go on. All these things we now do (often routinely).