Technology trends that will dominate 2017

Featured article by Jessica Gust, Marketing Assistant at Localpeek.co.uk

Technology changes fast, but we can also see trends in the way that it changes. 2016 brought a lot of new ideas, and this 2017 is set to do exactly the same. Get ready for new things and pieces of tech you’ve never heard of but can no longer live without. These are the technology trends which are positioned to dominate the year ahead.

Interconnected devices without a hub

For a long while, we’ve been thinking about smart homes set up around a centralized hub. The problem is that there can be a lot of problems with compatibility, and it all goes wrong if that one hub goes down. In order to combat this, you can expect 2017 to be a year of interconnected devices rather than a central hub. Think about things like Amazon’s Alexa, manifested in the Echo or Dot devices, which can be told to give commands to other devices. You can also use systems like IFTTT to get your systems working alongside one another. Compatibility will still be an issue, so you’re likely to be buying devices from the same brand or collection for the most part.

Year of the Chatbot

Business bots have already started running on a number of platforms, and this year they are going to be taking off in spades. If you thought that talking to a customer service chat support system was tough, you might want to give chatbots a try. They understand language and triggers better than ever before, and have advanced to the point where they can give you tech support or carry out marketing all by themselves. You might find the odd error, but this will be a great novelty for a little while. Entrepreneurs could start using bots within their business model to handle automation of tasks. These might even include getting designs from freelancers or polishing sales and marketing techniques for ecommerce. It’s time to let AI take over.

Grow your own protein

Plant-based replacements for meats have been around for decades, but mostly it’s just vegetarians who have been interested in them. That is about to change as lab-grown food will be cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Get ready to start seeing synthetic and plant-based meats more and more often. They are sure to be a big trend in the food industry, and where food meets tech there are sure to be big profits involved. That means even more development further down the line to create better tastes and textures.

Get your virtual reality on

VR headsets are all well and good, but you can’t exactly walk around with them on your face without crashing into things. But that’s fine, because in 2017 you will mostly be wearing them on the couch. Live entertainment is going to be going digital, with viewers offered the chance to watch through their VR headsets from the comfort of their own home. You will feel almost as if you are there, but you won’t be. Big events can be sold at a premium, and gaming is sure to develop the VR niche further too. With the popularity of Pokemon GO showing that we’re happy to bring the digital and physical worlds together, you won’t be able to throw a stone without hitting a VR gaming app in 2017.

There’s a lot set to come ahead, but the most exciting technological developments may just be the ones that we aren’t yet expecting. There’s no telling when the next iPhone moment will hit, and 2017 could be the year that we stumble on something new and ground-breaking.

Jessica Gust is a Marketing Assistant at Localpeek.co.uk– a new postcode finder. She is passionate about new marketing strategies, she is always eager to share her ideas through blogging.