Accelerating the Emergence of Emerging Technologies

LANGUAGE
English
SOURCE
IEEE Communications Magazine
Published Date:2015
ABSTRACT
Following the first column, “Promoting Emerging Technologies
in ComSoc” in October 2013, and the second column,
“Nurturing Emerging Technologies in Clouds” in November
2014, this column is aimed at further accelerating the emergence
of emerging technologies. Emerging technologies, as the
name shows, should still be emerging from, or only recently
emerged from, the research base. In other words, emerging
technologies, in particular in our information and communication
field, should be up-to-date by nature and therefore
should not remain in that category for a long time. However,
the reality is that the number of ComSoc subcommittees on
emerging technologies is growing quite fast, and some of them
have been there for quite a long time (e.g., nine years since
establishment). On one hand, every year there are new and
interesting technical areas being proposed, which leads to
increasing numbers of subcommittees. On the other hand, it
also leads to more and more overlap with existing committees
and/or subcommittees; hence, management of them becomes a
challenge. A key question then arises: what is a good number
of emerging subcommittees in our field, and how can we better
accelerate the emergence of emerging technologies?