NEED FOR SPEED: With higher internet speeds, the connection between humans and technology will tighten..

With higher internet speeds, the connection between humans and technology will tighten as machines gather, assess, and display real time personalized information in an "always-on" environment. This integration will affect many activities-including thinking, the documentation of life events ('life-logging'), and coordination of daily schedules. There will be changes across all aspects of life as internet connectivity advances by 2025.

As the internet closes in on speeds of 1 Gigabit, or 1,000 Mb, per second, it is expected to unleash a new set of applications, significantly altering the online as well as the offline existence of individuals and companies, impacting education, health care and business. However, it could widen the digital divide.

In the past every major advance in bandwidth has brought new innovation that has led to new services and applications to digital life. "In the internet's early days, slow modems facilitated email; faster dial-up modems helped websites become usable; early broadband roll out allowed for quicker sharing of relatively big files such as the MP3 music files that were shared on the first peer-to-peer services like Napster; later broadband advances allowed for streaming activities that have given rise to services like YouTube, Amazon Prime, and Netflix," the report said.

With higher internet speeds, the connection between humans and technology will tighten as machines gather, assess, and display real-time personalized information in an "always-on" environment. This integration will affect many activities-including thinking, the documentation of life events ('life-logging'), and coordination of daily schedules.

NEED FOR SPEED:

Things possible when Gigabit connectivity (1,000 Mbps) becomes more popular

• Your interactions with doctors, educators, merchants, and others will consist not of emailed forms or pre-recorded messages but of instantaneous, life-like video interaction that require no set-up or configuration.
• The past generation had to manually document their lives but we are looking at full video lifestreaming in the near future. Lifestreaming from ultrasound to final illness will be the killer app.
• It will be much cheaper and more convenient to have that monitoring take place outside the hospital. We will be able to purchase health-monitoring systems just like we purchase home-security systems. Indeed, the home-security system will include health monitoring as a matter of course. Robotic and remote surgery will become commonplace.
• Wearing clothes that are tailor-made, 3D-printed at home, will also become normal, with the previous day's clothes recycled efficiently; the school day will dis aggregate into a number of learning sessions, some at home, some in the neighborhood, some in pairs, some in larger groups, with different kinds of facilitators.

If there is a digital divide now, it will still exist in 2025. The divide's existence will be magnified by the new killer apps - who has access and who does not, beneficiaries and those left out.

    www.urssystems.com