In this week’s news roundup for IT leaders, we bring you a collection of headlines that caught our attention this week. Read on for articles about augmented reality, privacy, the future of the workplace, and more.
The promise of augmented reality [The Economist]: This is a great primer on augmented reality (AR) – what it is, what we’re seeing now, where the technology is likely to evolve in the future, and the barriers standing in its way. By way of definition, the article states, “AR is a close cousin to virtual reality (VR). There is, though, a crucial difference between them: the near-opposite meanings they ascribe to the term ‘reality.’ VR aims to drop users into a convincing, but artificial, world. AR, by contrast, supplements the real world by laying useful or entertaining computer-generated data over it. Such an overlay might be a map annotated with directions, or a reminder about a meeting, or even a virtual alien with a ray gun, ripe for blasting. Despite the hype and prominence given recently to VR, people tend to spend more time in real realities than computer-generated ones. AR thus has techies licking their lips in anticipation of a giant new market. Digi-Capital, a firm of merger and acquisitions advisors in California, reckons that of the $108 billion a year which it predicts will be spent by 2021 on VR and AR combined, AR will take three-quarters.”
The next big blue-collar job is coding [Wired]: Clive Thompson writes, “Politicians routinely bemoan the loss of good blue-collar jobs. Work like that is correctly seen as a pillar of civil middle-class society. And it may yet be again. What if the next big blue-collar job category is already here – and it’s programming? What if we regarded code not as a high-stakes, sexy affair, but the equivalent of skilled work at a Chrysler plant?”
How to prepare your privacy practices for the year ahead [ZDNet]: Heidi Shey, senior analyst at Forrester, says securing and protecting data is only one aspect of managing privacy. She provides three other imperatives for brands based on the biggest privacy lessons learned in 2016.
One CIOs vision of the future of the modern workplace [CIO]: Martha Heller interviews Dan Kieny, CIO of Black & Veatch, about the worker of the future and what IT organizations can do now to prepare. Kieny says, “Young children have a completely different UX paradigm and many do not know how to use peripheral devices, like keyboards and mice. In fact, they are rapidly moving beyond touch technology toward a direct dialogue with computers and are engaging in cognitive computing in a way that didn’t exist for our current workforce. Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home and even Watson-based technologies allow children to dictate everything from TV programming choices to asking questions. This will have an impact on the skills and approaches these young people will bring to the workforce.”
Who leads on AI: The CIO or the CDO? [Forbes]: Sooraj Shah writes, “Many will assume – particularly technology vendors touting their AI solutions – that it is the CIO that they need to pitch to. After all, the CIO signs off all technology procurement decisions, at least before it is then submitted to the CFO. But with the rise in prominence of the CDO role, perhaps this is misguided. After all, AI is based on data, and the person running the rule over how the data is used will be the CDO.”
