Scientists at the Imperial Tech Foresight (ITF), an offshoot of Imperial College London, have created the periodic table of distributive tech to bring to life nebulous and intangible technological advances.
The table was made by Richard Watson and Anna Cupani subsequent to perusing a dry rundown of rising advancements on Wikipedia.
Taking inspiration from the periodic table of chemical elements, scientists have created this table that contains 100 innovations, ranging from the benign and every day to the mind-blowing and potentially terrifying.
In this table, scientists have placed each element according to color code and slot and classified them in Y-axis and X-axis. The Y-axis ranks the potential for disruption from high to low, while the X-axis determines how soon it will become a reality.
For example, scientists have included element Cr that also known as Cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are now part of our modern life, while battlefield robots (Br) sounds like something straight out of “Iron Man”.
Here’s how scientists placed the element:
- The green elements in the bottom left-hand corner are happening now.
- The yellow blocks could come to pass in the near future.
- The red elements are a more distant concept, which could be 20 years away from becoming a reality.
- The final section of grey is fringe science, which TF identifies as “highly improbable, but not actually impossible.”
- The number of the elements relate to an example of the tech in action provided by ITF.
The elements also placed them according to themes. The initials at the bottom right of each box. These themes include extreme automation and human augmentation.
Maria Jeansson, who worked on the project, said, “it was designed as a visual conversation starter. Some corporate organizations have used it in workshops highlighting things that they should be thinking about.”
For some, they see things and say, ‘We didn’t imagine that would impact us.'”