Carmen Cracknell, Senior Reporter
Central and commercial banks will continue to be ahead of the game with fintech.
This means putting in place frameworks for open banking, stablecoins, and CBDCs.
But central banks will have a hard time winning over consumers who have understandable privacy concerns and don’t fully understand the utility of CBDCs.
Jean Hurley, Commissioning Editor
Sustainable tech will continue to take centre stage during 2024 as countries and corporations continue to work to meet net-zero commitments.
Challenges that developers and users of sustainable technology will need to face during 2024 will include a need to develop ethical and sustainable methods for sourcing and extracting materials needed for manufacturing devices.
The buzz around Quantum computing is growing. UK Government are investing £1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) in “super computers.
Banks and financial services organisations hope to enhance the power of AI systems developed in recent years for fraud detection, risk management and high-frequency trading.
Martin Cloake, Managing Editor
The sheer computing power and data capacity required to properly compete means big tech will become ever more dominant, with the trajectory for smaller concerns now pretty much exclusively ‘launch and get bought’.
The tension will grow between big tech and national and supranational government, reopening old debates about the role of the state in a new way, and raising questions about the individual’s relationship with the state and big tech, and personal rights.
Martina Lindberg, Production Manager
Generally agree with Thomas and Martin, particularly around Big Tech dominance and the dim outlook for smaller companies being able to scale to compete effectively outside of the niche markets in which they are founded.
Thomas Hyrkiel, Head of Content Services
Big Tech dominance is set to continue and as the profits roll in it will be even more difficult for little technology companies to remain independent.
A good idea and a nimble operator in a smaller market will become a target for a swift acquisition or control by way of shareholding by the bigger players looking for the ‘next big thing’ or a way into a subsidiary market.
Competition is a very good thing in internal markets, but the issue is that many of these companies have reached a size that make them a part of a country’s strategic economic arsenal – their role is not only to help drive economic growth, but to ensure technological dominance on the global stage.
And dominance or at least a facade of strength, at the moment, are very attractive propositions to many because the world feels a lot less safe than it did a few short years ago.