On Dec 21, 2011, IBMissued its sixth annual opinion of the five biggest technologieswhich would shine for the next five years. In its past predictions,IBM had successfully predicted the future of Telemedicine andNanotechnology.
This year IBM haspredicted that passwords would soon be a thing of past with atechnology that the company terms as ‘mind reading’. The digitaldivide will exist and junk mail would soon be very important.


Other Predictions

Steve Hamm wrote onSmarter Planet Blog of IBM, “Making this kind of prediction isdifficult. So, every year, IBM researchers stick out their necks.Which is risky.”
IBM fellow BernardMeyerson added, “A lot of people wait for things to happen. It'srare than an organization says: this is a big change, and it'scoming.”
As per IBM, the upcomingchanges would be in the field of:-

1) No Passwords- As perthe multi-factor biometrics of IBM, you will never need passwordagain. The smart systems would scan the retina and other personalinformation in real time. This would ensure that your passwordwouldn’t be used by anybody else. Thus, as soon as someone attemptsto access your information, the machine would try to match it withyour unique biometric profile. This will safeguard your account. Youwouldn’t require creation of password as your biological identityis your unique password. You can imagine this as being capable ofsecurely withdrawing money from ATM by just looking at the tinycensor which recognizes the retina of your eyes.

2) Mind Reading- IBMscientists are presently busy in linking the brain to devices. Theywish to achieve a condition in which you can call someone by simplythinking about him or move the computer cursor by simply thinkingabout it. Various scientists working in Biometrics field have alreadydeveloped headsets with sensors to read electrical brain activity torecognize excitement, facial expressions and concentration levels.According to IBM, within five years the early application of thistechnology will be seen in gaming and entertainment industry. Thetechnology would also be helpful in understanding a variety of braindisorders like autism.

3) Digital Divide- IBMhas also predicted that the huge gap between the haves and have-notsof information technology will considerably reduce in the coming fiveyears. At present, the population of world is around 7 billion. Infive years from now, 5.6 billion mobile devices will be sold whichsums to around 80% of the world population having a mobile.

4) No more junk - In fiveyears from now, the unsolicited advertisements would be personalizedand no spam would be present. Spam filters would be highly precise sothat the users would never be bothered about sales pitches. Accordingto IBM, the technology is being developed which will use real timeanalytics to integrate data from various facets of life includingsocial networks and online preferences.

5) Power- There will bevast advancement in renewable energy technology allowing people tocollect all kinds of kinetic energy like walking and cycling whichwill be used to power homes and offices.