If you want to carve out a viable career in tech, it pays to always keep one eye on the future. Which technologies will people use five, ten, even twenty years from now? What will eventually replace the gadgets and software we use today?

Predicting the future is a difficult business, of course. Back in ye olden days of 2006, for example, nobody could have predicted how thoroughly the iPhone and iOS would change the tech world. Within a few years, thousands of companies were building apps, altering forever how we use phones for work and play.

It’s a similar story with the cloud, which has managed to swallow up pretty much every single business process. During the pandemic, this proved intensely valuable, as technologists (and all kinds of other workers) could perform their complex jobs from the comfort of their own home, using only a laptop. Now concepts like edge computing are becoming more mainstream, which could further evolve the ways in which we all do our jobs.

With all that in mind, which of the following technologies interest you in a serious way? Take our quiz below; we’ll publish the results in a future article.

Even if you don’t think a particular technology will hit the mainstream for another few years, it’s never too early to start learning. With artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning, for example, there are lots of materials online that show you how to work with the tools and frameworks that make apps and services “smarter”; Hacker Noon offers a useful breakdown of A.I. from a programmer’s perspective, while KDNuggets also has a rundown of the basic terms and the technologies involved. 

When exploring nascent technologies, it’s also important to stay flexible and open. It often takes several years for adoption of a technology to increase, and winners to emerge among tools and platforms. Always do you best to stay informed about how the market is growing.