When it comes to technology, bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better. In fact, the trend to focus on making everything as small and tiny as possible is getting more intense every year. From nanotechnology to mini devices, we are close to a stage where small tech is running the show in almost every area of business. Let’s take a closer look – with a microscope, of course – to the little tech shaping the future of business, life, and beyond.
First of all, an obvious starting point – the handheld devices we all use on a daily basis. Smartphones and tablets give us as much power as a personal computer from around 10-15 years ago in the palm of our hands. We can access the web without needing a desktop or bulky laptop, and we can share and collaborate on documents and projects while on the move in an instant.
Of course, even the smallest smartphones are being ‘out-smalled’ by wearable tech. The Apple Watch, for example, gives you a lot of the features available on your phone just by glancing at your wrist. Perfect for employers who need staff to spend more time on the things that matter and less time being distracted.Fitbit-style watches are helping us keep healthy, and also make use of even smaller diagnostic technologies that allow us to track things like heart rate. Tech like this can help businesses track data and provide employees with smarter, more supportive, and more desirable workplace environments.
Storage space for the data used by businesses in the past used to take up entire rooms. Things are a little different these days. Take industrial USB drives as an example. These tiny devices can store huge amounts of data that wouldn’t have fitted on a roomful of disk drives in the early days of data storage.
While nanotechnology is still in its nascent days, the simple truth is that many experts believe it is going to disrupt almost every industry out there. We already have nanoelectronics in our mobile devices, of course, and there is a lot of work being done with nanotech in the medicine and biology fields, too.
Microfluidics is the technology of handling liquids on a tiny scale, and big noises are coming out of the industry that could have a massive impact on all kinds of businesses of the future. It will enable faster and more efficient lab analyses in healthcare, for example, and it can even help farmers with issues like livestock insemination.
Looking for a battery free future? So many different technologies rely on battery power to run, but there may not be any need for them with radio wave powered sensors. These little sensors can power themselves from radio waves, which ping around the earth constantly. Again, it’s a technology very much in its early days, but when it comes to powering the tiny chips that measure temperature, air pollution, and light in smart homes and buildings, it’s an incredibly exciting idea.