1) Autonomy of things
2019 technological trends Concept of autonomy of things

With this expression, Gartner refers to the ability of physical and virtual objects to operate by interacting directly with the environment through AI functions , without human control. There are five classes of ‘things’ involved. Three in the physical world: robots , vehicles and drones ; and two in the digital one: applications and software agents. All already show achievements with different degrees of autonomy and the prospects for development are both potentially enormous and rather close over time.

Accordingly, according to Gartner, it is appropriate for organizations and companies to evaluate how it can be useful in their own sectors and fields of activity to make certain operations autonomous. Being careful, however, that for physical as well as virtual objects, autonomy does not become independence. In the sense that it should be limited to specific tasks in a defined area a priori. Not only because the AI ​​has (not yet …) neither the decision-making abilities nor those of native learning (not based on instructions or experience) of the human mind, but also, we add, because making things capable of doing by itself involves ethical and legal aspects still to be clarified and whose effects and economic and social risks are all to be explored.

2) Augmented analytics
Augmented analytics concept

The volume of data to be chosen, grouped and examined to make decisions about it grows to levels that make it practically impossible to use for the business without automating the processes involved. A system generation is born, indicated with the expression ‘ augmented analytics ‘, which uses machine learning platformsand analysis algorithms contextualized to events to feed new analytical services, more capable of in-depth analysis and often incorporated in the applications for which the analyzes are intended.

The importance of this evolution and the reason why Gartner places it among the 2019 technological trends and thinks it will become mainstream in the short term, lies in the fact that automating the identification of data sets, patterns and hypotheses allows the most capable users of business applications (the ‘power users’) to do predictive and prescriptive analysis on their own and act accordingly. The so-called ‘citizen data scientist’ is born, a figure destined to grow by 2020 five times that of the real data expert, an increasingly rare and expensive professional to find on the labor market.

3) AI-driven development
AI-driven development concept

To incorporate artificial intelligence functions into applications(see point 2) new development tools are being created according to a trend that moves in three directions: the first is the transformation of AI tools aimed at data scientists into tools suitable for use by developers; the second is the introduction in these tools of AI capabilities that serve to automate in an ‘intelligent’ way (context and event-aware) the testing and code-generation processes; the third is the addition of a knowledge base of the business processes for which the applications are intended.

This evolution, according to Gartner, will also change the organization of development teams from a structure based on collaboration between data scientists and developers to one based on developers (even non-professional) able to use predefined AI models and development tools on their own. provided as a service.

There are often two questions I often ask students entering the Grade Secondary School for the first time:

1) “why is technology being studied in the school of the 21st century?” ;
2) ” what is meant by technology?” . The answers, despite being the most disparate, hardly catch the mark. The children of recent generations feel an active part of a society that is often called “technological” by everyone to differentiate it from the society of previous centuries; but that perhaps even primitive man had no technological means?

Well he also had his technology, different and simpler than ours, however he used “objects” to ensure that the daily actions dictated by the need to live, could be carried out in a simpler way and with less effort. Without the technology of primitive man we would not have had our current technology, given that complex technologies are nothing other than the set of simple technologies and current technologies arise from evolutions and assemblages of previous technologies that we define as older, but not for this less important.

Technology has always been an integral part of human life, since its origins, because it has allowed the satisfaction of many needs, including in the first placethose vital (let’s think of agriculture and breeding that have allowed us to provide the food necessary for life without the man being forced to move or hunt, avoiding efforts or even becoming prey). Technology, therefore, being an integral part of human life, has always had a sociological role, influencing behaviors and lifestyles.

A strong awareness and manifestation of this has occurred in the last century, that is when the negative aspects of technology are the most evident. Yes, technology has also shown a negative aspect, the second face of the coin. Often the negative aspects are not given so much by the technology itself, but by the way in which it is used (or rather abused) by man. Of course, technology is an interference of man over nature, and this is in itself a negative aspect because it puts the balance of natural cycles in unstable conditions.

If then the technology is created and used without any regard for the environment, despite having numerous immediate advantages for the simplification of our life, the future repercussions will be many and clearly visible, to the point of putting (as in part it is happening) in our survival is in danger. The biggest problems of the current “technological world” derive from the loss of the purpose for which objects are produced. Today we do not produce objects only to satisfy our main needs, we produce objects also and above all to accumulate “riches”, leading to an exploitation of the

That’s why we study technology at school ; to understand what it is, how it has evolved over time, what are the critical aspects, how it interacts with the environment and how it can solve needs (problems) still present among various populations, so that you “pupils” of today who will soon be “men of the world” of tomorrow, you can find solutions to the highlighted problems, continuing to produce Technology anyway, which in addition to satisfying all our needs, manages to do so in harmony with the environment, safeguarding the resources that our planet provides us with and which are necessary for our survival, guaranteeing a comfortable and healthy lifestyle to all the people of the planet.

Ultimately to say what is meant by Technology is not simple and immediate, it often comes to interact with philosophical concepts or even with human sensations or perceptions.
In our everyday life, talking about technology means talking about a science that deals with the production of goods or the organization of services designed to satisfy human needs . Goods are the objects that man uses in his daily life and services, organized systems that, in order to be put into practice, need means (goods and therefore objects) that are studied and produced by man.