If you were around in 2002 to see Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report when it was released at the cinema, you were probably really impressed with and more than a little jealous of the technology Tom Cruise’s character uses. What’s not to love about the wall-sized computer screens he expertly swipes and zooms through simply by waving his hands?
While the film is based on a science fiction novella by American writer Philip K. Dick published in 1956, Spielberg collaborated with futurists at the start of this century to imagine life five decades into the future. This thinking informs and shapes the futuristic technology showcased in the film. As of now, there’s still some way to go before giant gesture-based screens become part of the everyday, but we’ve all got access to this technology in miniature in the palm of our hands in the form of an Apple iPhone or a Google Android smartphone. The functionality inherent in smartphones today allows you to pull, zoom, and swipe at will – much like Tom does on a larger scale in the film.
New technology future is here today
But even a 2002 imagining of a 2050 world comes decades after Star Trek bravely went where no man had gone before to show characters using "communicators" to contact each. The TV show invited us to believe that you could use a small portable device to talk to people using similar devices wherever they were. And this was back in what you would now consider the technology dark ages of the 1960s. At this time in Australia, a home telephone was still regarded as a luxury item, meaning only a few residences had the phone connected. So, the concept of a communicator was literally out of this world. Now of course, its expected and commonplace.
As science fiction becomes fact in ever faster cycles, you no longer need a crystal ball on your desk to foresee the new technology future. But you do need to stay attuned to the new developments. When it comes to the changes in enterprise mobility, data, VOIP and other communication technologies along with cybersecurity best practices, it’s essential to have the right resources with the right skills in place at the right time to take advantage of the new technology before the competition.
As a critical yet specialised field, talent is always hard to find, and the cost associated with maintaining an in-house IT team can be significant. Rather than hiring people and orchestrating ongoing training and development, you can outsource to a managed services provider like imei.
imei has a team of hard-to-find qualified engineers who are highly trained to manage complex environments. As an accredited Telstra Global Partner, our team is certified in the latest technologies and are well versed in keeping in step with changing technologies, identifying security vulnerabilities, and putting the right defences in place to mitigate them. You can count on us for expertise managing mobility applications and systems and securing work processes, people, technology.
In the meantime, as scientists work to bring us a future of teleportation and holoportation technologies, get in touch if you want to discuss getting the right resources with the right skills in place at the right time to help optimise your ICT settings.
Until next time, beam me up, Scotty!
