Picture this : a world where AI is not just a “chatbot” you interact with, but an entity that is responsible for decision making, scientific research and even guiding humanity forward.

With the emergence of ever-cheaper and robust hardware, 5G connectivity around the corner, and most importantly, a growing list of real world use cases, we can all agree that IOT projects are here to stay. But is that where it ends ?

A year goes by so quickly. The one minute you’re at the beginning, wondering what the next 12 months will bring. Before you know it, you’re at a Christmas party. Ok…… perhaps it’s not that swift, but it sometimes feels like that. In the tech world, a year is a very long time, though. So much progress takes place in 12 months, and it’s only when you look back at a perspective written 12 months prior, do you realize how much the landscape has moved.

Yes, 2018, the 10th anniversary of Bitcoin, was the best ever year for the original cryptocurrency.

With all the hype around “blockchain”, I was thinking the other day that people are starting to get blockchain fatigue. The term itself has been heavily overexposed – and it’s probably not the best time to write another blockchain article, right?

Looking back, 2017 was a significant year for technology. Consider that at the beginning of 2017, Bitcoin was virtually unknown to most people , and Artificial Intelligence was something that they had perhaps heard of once or twice, but was still a concept confined to science fiction. Cloud computing was still untested to many people, and hardly anyone would realise how prevalent Bots would become a mere 12 months later.

Right now is absolutely the prime time to talk about cryptocurrencies. In November 2017, the value of Bitcoin exploded, surging so quickly, that it was the catalyst to bring Bitcoin into the public lexicon. However, Bitcoin is just the most well known of the cryptocurrencies - there’s a whole world of them out there. Many people who have been investigating cryptocurrencies have come across something called Ethereum. What is Ethereum ?

Engaging with customers daily can sometimes be fascinating. With so many new ideas and innovations in the tech world every year, the eagerness to talk to them and share this with them is great. It can be humbling then, astonishing even, when you go to a customer to talk about a topic like Machine Learning, only to see that not only have they embraced your technology, but are already pushing the boundaries in ways you haven’t seen previously. And when the person giving you a detailed instruction of what they’re doing is barely out of college, it does fill you with some excitement and optimism.

With all the hype around “AI” and Machine Learning, I thought that I’d dabble in unpacking some of the key concepts. I find that most of my reading time now is spent in this area.