IBM's Thinking of the next four Big Things in Technology

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/qanda-ibms-tim-sheehy-on-the-next-four-big-things-in-tech/2011/10/04/gIQAZIOLLL_blog.html

In this Washington Post article, Tim Sheehy of IBM discusses the next four big things in technology which are:

1. Machines that think - Watson is the best example of this. These machines can learn and compile information the way you and I do, whether it’s through visual information, spoken information or graphics. Health care is the most immediate application where all doctors would have access to machines like this help improve patient care. The law is another application where all cases are online and Watson can help with litigation support. Many more possibilities exist.
2. Nanotechnology - This lets you have a system on a chip. Nanomedicine is one application, one could target and find strains of bacteria, like a laser-guided missile for bacteria that’s resistant to antibiotics. think of the possibilities.
3. Big Data Analysis - This is about squeezing out as much information from large amounts of data as is possible. It’s very good for prevention of fraud or just finding mistakes in government program. Right now there is work going on with New York to root out errors in their Medicare and Medicaid systems.
4. Exascale Supercomting Systems - Leveraging existing technologies to improve computing power by an order of magnitute. Working with the Department of Energy’s laboratories, IBM could look at the energy grid of the whole U.S. and find ways to make it more resistant to failure.

These are some of the technologies that is being worked on and will very important to the work I am doing with the Federal, State, and Local Governments.