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Gartner‘s hype cycle for emerging technologies in 2018
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Hyundai Research Institute analyzes potential industrialization of new and emerging technologies
Technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution regarded as the engines for new growth will also undergo “restructuring” next year according to their potential for industrialization, a new report says. According to a report titled “Ten Major Characteristics of the Industrial Economy in 2019” that was released by the Hyundai Research Institute (HRI) on Nov. 25, biotechnology, self-driving cars and quantum computers, which are all areas of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, will move toward industrialization next year amid the rapid formation of related markets. But the market and technological conditions of other related technologies, including drones, hydrogen fuel-cell cars and blockchain, remain immature, the report said, which is prompting a negative outlook for the feasibility of their industrialization. The aging of South Korean society will rapidly propel the industrialization of biotechnology, the report predicts, while a commercial market will also form for autonomous cars given growing demand for efficient traffic systems and the technological development of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, as the soaring volume of data leads to increasing demand for computing power surpassing that of today’s computers, the report projects that quantum computers will also be used in a number of sectors, including medical, aerospace and manufacturing. On the other hand, deep learning has thus far failed to reach the stage of popularization, and despite the high degree of interest in blockchain, that field is running into limitations including the lack of key technology and the immaturity of operating systems, HRI concluded. Furthermore, commercialization has been slow in the area of augmented reality because of a lack of diverse content, while drones have reached an early stage of industrial formation but lack the incentives to attract additional demand. In the case of hydrogen fuel-cell cars, industrialization is unlikely to begin at the present time both because most countries (with the notable exceptions of South Korea and Japan) are focusing on electric cars as the cars of the future and because of the cost of building charging stations. “Next year, there will be restructuring even inside areas related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Private- and public-sector funding and resources will be concentrated in areas that are capable of industrialization in the near term while other areas will be relatively marginalized,” the institute said. According to this year’s Hype Cycle report published by IT research and consulting firm Gartner, which examined trends in the new technologies that will drive market changes over the next five to ten years, deep learning, blockchain and augmented reality are technologies that will not take off until expectations about new technologies have peaked. HRI’s report went on to predict that specific actions would be taken to restructure industry next year as a consensus forms in South Korea’s government and industrial sectors about the plummeting competitiveness of the country’s leading industries. “There are also expected to be major changes in the government’s mid- and long-term industrial policy plan,” the institute said in the report. This means that government funding will be concentrated on new technologies that are capable of industrializing in the short term despite the government’s push to promote new growth engines. “Even in regard to new technologies and industries, we need to move away from fantasies and fads so that we can identify the small number of industries that are feasible and appropriate as a growth dynamo in the Korean economy and industrial structure and to make the strategic choice of focusing our support on those industries,” the report suggested. By Cho Kwe-wan, staff reporter Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
