Predicting Tech in 2022

OK, I’m going to say it: 2020 and 2021 were not good. As I shake off the old years and look to the new, I’m inspired by the potential that technology brings to help us move forward. Although the future is unwritten, I had fun writing these Tech Predictions for 2022.?

Neuro-Mining Fuels the Algorithms:? I predict that in 2022, some well-known e-commerce and social media companies will begin purchasing output from unregulated neuro-mining operations to enhance or supplant their own regulated behavioral models.?Because neuro-mining operations are both novel and not yet monetizing at scale, they remain under the radar and unregulated.?However, in 2022, ?I predict that companies which are dependent on expensive-to-generate and -regulate behavioral data to fuel their transactions and interaction designs will find it easier and more flexible to purchase and monetize instructions from these models, rather than fueling their operations with real behavioral data that may be subject to data privacy regulations.?Like crypto-mining operations, neuro-mining operations are already set up and running on a global basis, with probabilistic data sets available for purchase.

Gaming Tech Goes Enterprise:?I predict that in 2022, we’ll see wide-scale enterprise adoption of gaming technology for collaboration and presence.?We already see Silicon Valley venture capital firms such as Greylock investing in gaming tech stocks like Discord, who in December 2020 raised $100M in capital from some of the hallmarks of SV tech funds.?I believe this trend has been created and driven by the juxtaposition of enterprise tech within the context of consumer tech as knowledge workers around the world pivoted to work from home.

NFT’s enter the enterprise tech world: I predict that in 2022 enterprises will begin to experiment with NFT’s as a form of compensation and market value creation.??It’s happening with Martha Stewart and with branded clothing—why not branded tech??Fortnite, Roblox, Snapchat…and influencers such as RandomFrankP's Room Tour Project have socialized the notion of NFT’s as proxies for status and reward in enterprise tech.?It’s just a matter of coding before we’ll begin to see NFT’s showing up in the enterprise as incentives for employees to behave in ways that companies desire or as rewards for customers or prospects to consume products at volume levels or in sectors where the company wants to advance its market share or brand.?

Gen-Z Bring the MultiVerse to Work:?In 2022, some companies will begin to offer purpose-built roles to the digital natives of Gen-Z, enabling location- and identity-neutral designations for this cohort of employees.?As the first truly digitally-native generation, Gen-Z employees will be most productive when they are not confined to set time-zones, locations, identity designators such as job descriptions and titles, or permanent organizational structure or fixed team cohorts.?Particularly in the technology sector, companies that rely on access to a population of recent college grads will adapt their structures in order to enable productivity from this group in the Multiverse.

An excerpt from a (completely fascinating) McKinsey Report that supports this notion: “Gen Zers are radically inclusive. They continually flow between communities that promote their causes by exploiting the high level of mobilization technology makes possible. Fifty-two percent of Gen Zers think it is natural for every individual to belong to different groups (compared with 45 percent of the people in other generations), and Gen Zers have no problem with moving between groups.”

Trend-Jacking Will Supplant Marketing—I predict that in 2022, those who figured out how to trend-jack on platforms like TikTok will begin joining the marketing ranks of traditional and digital enterprises.?As a result, companies will increasingly value employees who have mastered the art of fluid in-context storytelling using multiple real-time media tools.?In the end, as Brene Brown might say, “the story we tell ourselves” about products, services and technology will be greatly influenced by how trend-jackers set context.?Storytelling will become the next tool in mass personalization.

Cyber Exploits Will Modernize:?I predict that in 2022 we’ll see the first major cyber exploits that take advantage of technology advancements that are not yet well-secured.?Perhaps we’ll see a major exploit that uses facial recognition technology’s recent enhancements to carry out a business-impacting Deep Fake. Or we'll see a major retailer's POS systems infiltrated via 5G.?Hybrid and remote work increases the value of data shared over 5G--and the bad actors will follow the value.

Livestream Shopping for Enterprise Tech:?I predict that in 2022, Livestream shopping will move beyond China and the consumer space and cross over into the enterprise space, affecting affluent and connected economies in the US and Europe.?Just two years into the livestream shopping trend, in a 2020 survey—over 60% of Chinese shoppers said they’d bought products via livestream.?It’s a compelling interaction design enabled by tech and informed by AI. In other words, it's cheap to enable, enhance and scale.

All in all, 2022 is shaping up to be an interesting and transformational year in Tech.?Here’s to moving forward together!??