Trend: Human ware
Technology and our bodies are merging. Technology is now being incorporated in our surroundings but will finally even be integrated into our body.
The(visible) border between technology and the human being is disappearing slowly but surely. The human being is already strongly dependent of technology. The simplification of the use of technology will increase this dependency. The trend ‘Rise of humanware’ describes the development of the merger between human being and machine. At this moment we see that the use and interaction is mostly set up around the human being. But eventually technology will be around people invisibly. We will see that technology and the human being will ‘meet each other’ and ‘integrate’. We see a lot of development around this trend in the military industry (exoskeletons for example) and in the medical science. For years it was an important challenge for science to integrate technology and people. But nowadays we come close in creating humanoid robotics, cyborgs and for example prosthetics that come very close to look being real limbs. A big promoter of this development is Kevin Warwick (professor Cybernetics of the University of Reading). Technology is merging with our human flesh.