IEEE President’s Note: Looking to 2050 and Beyond
What will the foreseeable future of the planet glance like? Every little thing in the earth evolves. Consequently, IEEE also have to evolve, not only to survive but to thrive.
How will persons establish communities and interact with one a further and with IEEE in the future? How will know-how be acquired? How will content be curated, shared, and accessed? What challenges will affect the growth of specialized benchmarks? How really should IEEE be arranged to be most impactful?
When no one has a crystal ball, predictions can be produced based on evidence and developments. To start off the discussion about these questions, I appointed the 2022 IEEE Advert Hoc Committee on IEEE in 2050. The committee chaired by IEEE Fellow Roger Fujii, is built to imagine scenarios searching out to the calendar year 2050 and outside of to achieve a worldwide standpoint of what the environment may perhaps appear like and what opportunity futures may suggest for IEEE.
The committee explored plausible eventualities across IEEE’s vary of pursuits and scanned for drivers of change within just existing and emerging technological innovation fields. It also analyzed the job IEEE really should consider centered on the recognized prospective futures and talked over next measures in IEEE’s significant spots of focus, together with conferences, training, publications, specifications, membership, sustainability, and governance.
For case in point, consider that in 2050, your “cognitive digital twin” is constantly browsing the large volumes of analysis papers and data stored throughout open accessibility repositories to discover facts directly suitable to your interests. It will also use its imaginative and imaginative logic to suggest new ideas and methods for you. This platform will be pushed by artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and digital truth designed to support make you much more productive and imaginative in your profession. What is IEEE’s role in this new atmosphere?
Molding the IEEE of the future
As a world-wide organization, a substantial obstacle of IEEE is that it supports a broad local community. This also provides a fantastic possibility to find out and pilot a variety of designs, providers, products and solutions, and solutions to meet the varied set of members’ requirements predicted for 2050 and over and above.
The technologies technology of 2050 will very likely be fascinated in solving mission-based troubles these as climate modify, common accessibility to wellness care, sustainable food stuff resources, and ubiquitous electrical power technology and transmission. Hence, IEEE’s mission—to progress technologies for humanity—will however be relevant in the upcoming. Nonetheless, the way IEEE achieves its mission should and will alter.
The foreseeable future is multinodular and electronic. IEEE will profit from its status and track record as a trustworthy, neutral service provider of information and data. As a information service provider, IEEE has an chance to curate and supply data to guide its constituents and the community in being familiar with the benefits and dangers linked with numerous technology parts. Most importantly, IEEE can enable with the deep integration of artificial intelligence and virtual fact into a huge wide range of each day programs.
Adapting to an atmosphere of regular chaos and change is crucial transferring ahead. The ebb and stream of geopolitical tensions are most likely to proceed to increase—which will impact international corporations like ours. IEEE should develop into exceedingly nimble to address speedy alterations in technologies and interdisciplinary desires, and appeal to a broader viewers. IEEE will also will need to promptly answer to chosen strategic variations and allocate funding for new methods. IEEE’s governance construction will need to be streamlined to fulfill the demands of many long term eventualities that will have to have the corporation to empower area entities to make selections in their spot.
Have confidence in in IEEE must keep on being significant if the firm is to maintain relevance and remain a credible source of information and facts in the long run. Now is the time for the firm to be thoughtful and bold, and choose risks. IEEE simply cannot be afraid to split silos. Some pursuits will have to have to be terminated to make space for new ones. Products and solutions and initiatives really should be evaluated on a regular basis, and choices have to be manufactured on a continuous foundation.
Sound frightening? Compounded by worldwide warming, uneven demographic development, and geopolitical difficulties, the foreseeable future probable is extra unsure than we comprehend. But generally a crisis can be transformed into prospect if we actually deal with the unforeseen and develop into organized for whatsoever lies in advance. Adhering to IEEE’s core principles—trust, development and nurturing, world neighborhood developing, partnership, company to humanity, and integrity in action—will serve the firm properly into the future.
I sincerely thank Roger Fujii and the advertisement hoc committee customers for their efforts. Their do the job will help IEEE in devising prolonged-time period strategies to prepare for the long run, to adapt, and to convert uncertainty into possibility.
As I have shared, in an at any time-modifying and uncertain globe, IEEE—your expert home—is constantly here for you, our members, as properly as for humanity, and for our shared future. Soon after all, serving our users effectively is our raison d’être.
By addressing the worries and chances that lie forward of us, IEEE can continue being a lively business with relevance both equally now and nicely into 2050. If IEEE remains true to its central values—fostering technological innovation and excellence for the advantage of humanity—I’m sure that the organization’s upcoming will be incredibly vivid without a doubt.
It has been my honor and privilege to perform with and for you this 12 months as IEEE president and CEO.
—K.J. RAY LIU
IEEE president and CEO
Be sure to share your feelings with me at [email protected].
This short article appears in the December 2022 print challenge as “Looking to 2050 and Beyond.”