Information and communications technology (ICT) has been our salvation over the past year, enabling remote work, learning, and telemedicine during the deadly pandemic. This technology has also enabled sobering threats, like the recent takeover of the U.S. Capitol. For good and bad, our connected world touches us all every day. 

We are three engineers who worked on some of the foundational pieces of the Internet and our global wireless communications network. Our perspectives on technology trends to watch are informed by decades of iterative and breakthrough discoveries. From blockchain to cybersecurity to wireless, here are three trends we are focused on:

Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies

To create the applications and systems that will make order-of-magnitude improvements for businesses and consumers, silos are breaking down, creating complex intersections of areas such as networking, communications, distributed systems, privacy, transparency, security, fairness, and cryptography. The technologies of blockchain and distributed ledgers are poised to have a significant impact.

The penetration of blockchain is accelerating as mainstream financial and commercial organizations recognize its value and utility. As they deploy and engage the broad public audience, we will likely see a flow of activity leveraging this technology in the next year or two. Much of this will focus on cryptocurrencies, which rely on blockchain for their underlying design. For example, Visa is planning to reward customers with Bitcoin instead of airline miles or cash. PayPal recently announced that its 26 million merchants will be able to use cryptocurrency as a payment alternative. JP Morgan has launched its own stablecoin, JPM Coin, and is working with Russia’s largest state-owned bank, Sberbank, which is considering the launch of a digital asset trading platform and its own digital currency. Healthcare and supply chain management are not far behind.

Emerging major technology innovations are poised to utilize the advantages of open, secure, immutable, and irrevocable distributed ledgers. The Internet of Things (IoT), requiring both security and openness, is poised to incorporate such ledgers and protection.

Near Term Internet Security

The growth in the IoT, along with advanced capabilities of rogue players and the complexity of software, make Internet security, safety, and confidentiality one of our most critical issues. Keeping the world’s Internet users safe and secure and their transactions private will require “under the hood” infrastructure. These technologies, though not very visible, will be important.

We will see a strong preference for all web sites to require the use of HTTPS (Secure Hypertext Transport Protocol). Misrouting attacks, which can disrupt all services, will be inhibited by strong authentication of routing updates in which Routing Public Key Infrastructure is applied to the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). As IoT populates the Internet with billions of networked devices, there will be continued implementation of IPv6 (the large address space version of the Internet Protocol). To protect users from having their accounts hijacked, even if their usernames and passwords have been exposed, we will ideally see further spread of two-factor authentication (2FA). Finally, protections against Domain Name spoofing, such as Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), should be promoted. 

5G for Emerging Countries

5G, the next generation of cellular communications technology, has evolutionary and revolutionary services that could have a deep impact on the global economy. In the next couple of years, 5G will unleash new economic opportunities and societal benefits enabled by higher speed Internet with speeds ten times higher than 4G. Some early applications include smart cities utilizing 5G for real-time traffic control or wireless delivery of high-resolution streaming media. 5G will also enable emerging countries to leapfrog traditional barriers while advancing ‘digitalization’ by improving access to resources and services for economically vulnerable populations.

5G standards envisage various types of wireless services—high-speed links with peak rates up to 20 Gbps for applications such as true distance learning and telemedicine, low-speed links with high-connection density (one million per Sq. Km.) for IoT devices, environmental monitoring and smart grids, and a new class of links that achieve both low latency (less than 1 millisecond round trip time) and high connection reliability (link reliability of 0.99999) for autonomous vehicles and factory automation. 

Together, these services have the potential to create a revolutionary class of applications including virtual and augmented reality, autonomous and remote driving, edge computing, and Industry 4.0 (the automation of traditional manufacturing processes using smart technology). 5G will extend the use of wireless technologies across completely new sectors of the economy, enabling innovative applications for individuals and economic verticals from industrial, commercial, educational, healthcare, agricultural, financial, and social sectors.

Vint Cerf, 1998 Marconi Fellow; Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

Leonard Kleinrock, 1986 Marconi Fellow; Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, UCLA

Arogyaswami Paulraj, 2014 Marconi Fellow; Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University