Sigma Scan Highlights

The Sigma Scan, commissioned by the UK Government’s Horizon Scanning Centre, is a collection of future issues and trends developed by the Outsights-Ipsos MORI partnership. They have carefully examined many trends and made predictions for the future in a horizon until the year 2050. More information can be found HERE. We have collected the most relevant predictions and important quotes for IRL.

Tracking & Tracing
- Smaller, cheaper, more accurate sensors using nanotechnology promise to provide unprecedented access to information about the physical world.
- The large amount of material openly available online has increased people’s ability to find out about others.

Connectivity and Network Interactions
- One result may be a decreasing distinction between physical and virtual environments, for example by partial automation of the role of the vehicle driver. This has already happened with banking and online retailing, where complex systems include both physical and virtual components
- Network systems involving physical and virtual components will be likely to be used to run business and government, monitor the environment, develop new technology and for numerous other purposes. The Internet may become fully incorporated into physical infrastructure with numerous potential benefits.

Sensory transformation: life in a cloud of data
- Over the next ten years, increasing numbers of computational devices may be embedded in physical objects, places, and even human beings. These devices could sense, react to, and act upon their surroundings. Furthermore, a network of these sensing devices would provide considerable amounts of additional information about their environment.

IRL Commentary

When we analyze the implications and early indicators presented to us by the Sigma Scan, we may conclude that futurologists agree that the virtual world and the physical world will become increasingly connected with another and that the distinction between them may disappear over time.