Top 5 Technology Trends in 2023

In this review, we’ll take a look at five top technology trends for 2023. Today we are on an exponential technological wave. With the convergence of technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum, nano- and edge computing, blockchain and VR/AR, companies and industries are experiencing upheavals that have not happened before. Depending on how we humans apply new technologies, these innovations can be either positive or negative for humanity.

The recent announcement by Meta, as an example, has already become a catalyst for the “metaverse”, fueling further investment in VR and AR, as well as in blockchain, cryptocurrency and AI. Zuckerberg has announced that he will spend $10 billion next year alone on the metaverse. It is common knowledge that Facebook deliberately polarizes and disrupts societies around the world.

The amount of data Meta will collect with VR and AR devices is expected to increase the amount of user data they have already collected in years past. Meta wants to manage the advertising business in a way that further strengthens its influence and power in the global community.

Fortunately, the development of Web 3.0, including NFT, decentralized storage, computing power, bandwidth and cryptocurrencies, cannot be stopped today. Ultimately, users and content creators will choose to be independent of big technology and enjoy the benefits of data ownership, empowerment, and self-reliance.

In 2023, as distributed ledger technology advances, there will be significant changes in this area. Therefore, I would call 2023 the year of decentralization.

Top 5 technology trends in 2023:

1. Start and development of the “Metaverse”

The first trend to look at is, of course, the “metaverse”. Next year, we will by no means be living in a “metaverse.” It will probably take another 5-10 years before we can fully immerse ourselves in the world of the Metaverse (this will be the convergence of the physical and digital worlds).

The Metaverse today is what the Internet was in 1995, and the Metaverse will have as big an impact on society as the Internet did. This will completely change the way we work, live and socialize, and those organizations that adapt too late will cease to exist. The driving force behind the metaverse will be the gaming industry, which already surpasses the film and music industries combined.

The Metaverse is not only entertainment. There are serious dangers in the immersive Internet. Much like the negative impact of cybercrime on Web 2.0, cybercriminals will happily take part in the metaverse and discover, especially early in its formation, that it is the Wild West. The first advanced fans of the metaverse, such as Generation Z and Generation Alpha, will be able to dodge these attacks; other users will lose their money, or worse, their identity.

The technology required to move from a centralized network to a decentralized one is getting closer to being ready for mass adoption. In addition, AR and VR equipment will become better, lighter and cheaper. Although the latter may not apply to the rumored Apple headset that could arrive in late 2023. Collectively, next year we will see more decentralized applications that are easier to use and with an improved user interface, which marks the beginning of the metaverse.

2. Cambrian explosion of artificial intelligence

From huge generative pre-trained transducer models to synthetic data use cases and tiny machine learning models running at the edge using custom AI chips, 2023 will see an explosion of AI.

The rapid development of deep learning and neural networks by companies like DeepMind will lead to new breakthroughs like AlphaFold. Overall, 2023 will see the Cambrian explosion of artificial intelligence, which will bring us even closer to artificial general intelligence.

Most of the developments will take place in the course of experimental research, and only later will they become available for mass implementation. Just as new technologies developed by NASA or Formula 1 eventually become available in our cars, homes and offices. However, artificial intelligence and machine learning will play an increasing role in automating our work.

For those who don’t code or specialize in data, this will lead to more advanced robotic process automation (RPA), which will allow employees and managers doing office work to automate their work even more, without the need for coding. Consequently, employees will get more work done because RPA can now automate most of the repetitive work.

Of course, if non-developers can use AI and ML to automate (part of) their work, those with programming skills can use the same tactic. GPT-3 is already being used to write code faster, but in 2023 we will also see more advanced, automated and intelligent hacking.

Increasingly, hackers are turning to AI to do more work, infiltrate companies faster, and steal more data and money. At the same time, people protecting their companies will also turn to AI. Increasingly, both hackers and IT security personnel will use AI, resulting in a light-speed battle and leading to better tactics on both sides.

3. The war for talent will intensify thanks to technology

In May 2021, at the height of the pandemic, Anthony Klotz coined the term “Great Retirement”. Based on his research, the management professor observed that the pandemic has made people reflect on their lives. More and more people have begun to value time spent with family, seeing the benefits of working remotely, reducing travel time to work, and being able to focus on projects they love.

Of course, all this is made possible by the many technologies that make remote work easier. Managing your day, sticking to your sleep schedule and being more productive than ever has never been easier than ever. This awakening, combined with the ongoing pandemic, will lead to more people choosing to follow their passions. People leaving their current job and looking for a new one are no longer tied to their local jobs.

This is good for employees, because the world has suddenly become their home. However, the same is true for organizations that make full use of remote work. They, too, will “be able to fish” in a much larger talent pool.

In general, the war for talent will continue, albeit on a much larger scale. Companies have access to more employees anywhere in the world, but they can also choose to replace those jobs with ever-improving AI or robotics, depending on the job at hand.

Employees are no longer limited to what is available in their geographic area and can become more selective. Most importantly, telecommuting technologies will become more advanced and intuitive, thanks to the development of metaverse technology, where collaboration along the digital highway will become the norm.

4. Decentralized finance will destroy many industries

With the current NFT hype, decentralized finance (DeFi) will create significantly more opportunities for people to take control of their financial lives. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a fantastic technology that, in addition to being able to sell JPEG files for millions of dollars, allows you to prove ownership of a digital asset. Regardless of what kind of digital asset it is. Just like in the real world, once you can prove ownership, the asset becomes tradable and barterable, which fuels economic growth.

NFTs have some unique characteristics that will completely change our economic system, including:

• Fractional Ownership: While the utility of an NFT is indivisible, ownership of the underlying digital asset is not. A digital asset may be owned by multiple people, each of whom benefits from a particular underlying digital asset;
• Digital scarcity: Like bitcoin, digital assets can become scarce. Instead of unlimited digital copies, digital assets can become limited editions depending on how many NFTs have been minted.
• Uniqueness: Non-fungibility means that you cannot trade one for the other as there are no identical NFTs. All of them are unique.
• Transparency and Authenticity: Thanks to the blockchain, the information to whom the NFT has been shared is public and we can see which wallet owns the NFT. If you can verify ownership of the wallet, you are verifying ownership of the specified NFT.
• Interoperability: NFTs can already be traded across blockchains thanks to decentralized bridges. Once NFTs go mainstream, they will redefine our financial infrastructure.

Let’s look at a real world comparison, if you own a piece of land, real estate, art or a car, you can rent it out or sell it to someone and become a homeowner, art dealer or car rental company. Or you can mortgage your property to get more money and buy more property with it to make more money. The bank can then package these mortgages and insure them, or sell them to another bank and make a ton of money.

Now replace the real asset with any NFT related digital asset and replace the bank with smart contracts and you have Decentralized Finance (DEFI). This is a very simplistic way of explaining it, but it shows the unlimited potential it has. The breakthrough brought about by NFTs will completely change the traditional financial industry because their providers will become redundant in a decentralized world.

In addition to revolutionizing the financial world, NFTs will also bring completely new ways to generate income. From playing to earning, reading to earning, streaming to earning, or “anything you can think of” to earning. Once you’ve earned, minted, or bought an NFT, you can rent it, loan it against it, license it, sell it, package it, insure it, and make money from it.

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) will allow any (niche) community to come together and raise funds to borrow or buy any NFTs. A great example is the DAO Constitution, which managed to raise $47 million in a few days from cryptocurrency enthusiasts in an attempt to buy a copy of the US constitution. Even though they were outbid, it shows the power of the DAO.

Another new type of funding is crowdfunding, which is currently taking place as part of the Polkadot parachain auctions. In recent weeks, the crypto community has already contributed $3.7 billion in DOT to help their beloved Polkadot project win the auction for a parachain slot.

If this sounds crazy, you better get used to it. In 2023, we will see more decentralized finance applications that allow content creators, cryptocurrency owners, and innovators to make money without the involvement of traditional financial institutions.

5. From irresponsibility to zero trust (Zero Trust) – a new approach to security

If the last decades have proven anything to us, then the current approach to corporate IT no longer works. Hackers, scammers, deep fakes, malware, phishing attacks, and many other types of digital criminal activity are causing massive havoc around the world. With an ever-increasing number of cyberattacks and the global cost of cybercrime rising to $10 trillion in 2025, zero trust will become more important than ever before.

The idea behind Zero Trust is that anyone or anything attempting to access a network is considered untrustworthy by definition and therefore a threat to the system. First of all, it is a mindset that network administrators and engineers must build into their architecture in order to protect the organization from external and internal threats.

• The term Zero Trust was first coined by John Kinderwag of Forrester Research in 2010.

The Zero Trust architecture requires strict identity verification for anyone and everyone who wants to connect. It offers many benefits over the traditional architecture, including consumer data protection and a more efficient security stack and protocol.

A zero-trust architecture may seem similar to a system without trust, but they are actually very different. Yes, in both cases, cryptography plays a key role. However, the zero-trust architecture is largely centralized to protect everything that needs to be protected (data, services, systems, etc.). In contrast, a trustless system uses cryptography to achieve a single source of truth using a decentralized ledger, also known as a blockchain.

As the datafication of our society is at an all-time high and almost every organization around the world is involved in some kind of digital transformation, zero-trust and no-trust systems will become more and more important in 2023.

Add to that the rise of quantum computing, which will render today’s encryption useless, and organizations don’t have time to waste changing their approach to data. Fortunately, both a centralized, zero-trust approach and a decentralized, trustless system can work very well together. Both are needed in the face of ever-increasing cyber threats, and in 2023, the adoption of these systems is expected to grow significantly.

Output

In the coming year, we can expect more radical changes, and at the end of 2023, humanity will become even closer to the digital world. Companies can no longer put off their digital transformation projects and anyone must work hard to stay on top of the latest technology.

Moreover, change is rapidly accelerating. If companies and businesses want to stay relevant, they need to be vigilant and focused. They should develop an adaptive and flexible culture where people can explore and experiment with new technologies and share their knowledge internally. It’s the only way to stay relevant in the face of an ever-increasing pace of technological change.

Already, the life expectancy of large companies has been significantly reduced over the past decades. New “unicorn companies” are appearing and disappearing faster and faster, and their number will only increase in the coming years.

Of course, the five technology trends discussed here are just the tip of the iceberg. The dawn of the metaverse is here, and hopefully we can fix the problems of Web 2.0 and build a decentralized, user-driven metaverse. NFTs will play a vital role in this coming metaverse. They will open up many new business and financial models driven by smart contracts rather than financial institutions.

As work becomes increasingly decentralized and geographically distributed, and trustless systems become more important, 2023 will indeed be the year of decentralization. Of course, not all systems can be decentralized. The Cambrian AI explosion will further require zero trust architectures as cybercriminals will also have access to increasingly sophisticated AI.

Above all, to stay relevant in 2023, companies and individuals should try to stay up to date with the latest innovations and advances in technology. If you missed your train, it won’t be easy for you to board again, and 2023 could very well be the last stop before takeoff.