To predict the future...

To predict the future, subtract something that is important today and fill it with something else. Everything that is popular in technology always gets replaced.

The “Forrest Gump rule” as explained by Peter Levine of Andreesen Horowitz in The End of Cloud Computing.

In his talk, Peter Levine applies this approach to predicting the future of Cloud and IoT as follows:

Situation

Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices are proliferating at a massive rate. These edge devices are capable of (a) sensing (b) inferring (c) acting.

Complication

At the edge, the ability to handle massive amounts of sensor data (information agility), is more important than sheer processing power. Today’s cloud computing infrastructure imposes too much latency for systems that need to make decisions in real-time. Examples include: (a) Autonomous vehicles that need to take evasive action to prevent an accident (b) running shoes that can tell you how to improve your stride.

Resolution

In the future:

• The most important decisions will be made at the edge. Edge devices will be used for real-time, real-world distributed data processing.
• The cloud will become the place where important information is stored and processed so that learning can be sent back out to the Edge
• We will move to a world of data-centric programming; less "if-then-else" coding and more advanced data processing & machine learning coding. Moreover, new data analytics languages will be developed.
• Machine learning and vision chips will become as commonplace as GPUs.
• This change will impact: networking, storage, computing hardware & semiconductors, programming languages, security, and company/people management.