Nostradamus must be glad. Glad he wasn't born in this century, or the one gone by. The unparalleled pace of technological innovation would have impacted the accuracy of his visions and made his job even tougher. The fact is that today, predicting how technology will evolve and impact our lives in the near future is a task reserved for the truly blessed. The best we can do is paint a picture of what could happen-and rest assured that reality will be more advanced than anything we fathom today.

Pareto's Law-the famous 80:20 rule that governs many management principles, is applicable to our lives as well. Today, an average individual spends 80 per cent of her time making decisions, doing things or dealing with situations that only impact 20 per cent of her life. The daily grind saps her of all energy, and the monotony takes away the motivation. The result-she spends the rest of her time (the meagre 20 per cent) envisioning a life full of things she actually wants to do. Of course, there's never enough time to actually get something done. Technology, I believe, has the power to change this.

As I contemplate the ways in which technology will continue to change our life in and around the year 2020, some regular thoughts that pop into my mind are: life will be easier, more efficient and more structured. But that's not all. I believe people will be happier, and life more meaningful. It will free up time and a person's mind for other things, in addition to enriching every experience manifold. By providing people with the means to strike a perfect balance between what they want to do and what they must, technology will help improve the overall quality of life.

We first need to understand how technology itself is expected to evolve, following which comprehending its expected impact will be easier. One of the most important things that will happen is technology will be "humanised". This will be possible with the emergence of immersive technologies that combine elements of enhanced multi-media such as spatially-placed sound, 3d video and graphics, and haptic technology capable of conveying a sense of touch, texture and temperature. As technology is made to speak and engage with us at a closer, more human level, the rate of change we experience will be much greater.

The other development will be the transformation of the internet-both from a technology and an adoption perspective. The internet as we know today will be transformed from a low-fidelity medium used for browsing information, to a high-fidelity one that delivers rich and immersive experiences. Adoption of the existing options will also grow. Broadband will evolve to be more powerful and will flow into our homes as easily and ubiquitously as electricity does today.

Finally, the direct impact of nanotechnology on everyday human lives will be much clearer. Nano-technology can, perhaps, be best defined as the ability to engineer new attributes by controlling features at a very small scale. One nanometre is a billionth of a metre; or about 1/80,000 the width of a human hair. Its direct impact on end users is relatively unexplored, but an example is the research on how nanotechnology can make soldiers less vulnerable to enemy and environmental threats.

Technology will be humanised through technologies that combine spatially-placed sound, 3D video and graphics, and haptic technology capable of conveying a sense of touch, texture and temperature

As these technologies become all pervasive and seamlessly integrate into the very fabric of our lives, the things we do daily will undergo a dramatic change. Here are some examples:

One of the most important areas where technological progress will make a big difference is education. While information and digital media technology have been progressing at breakneck speeds, little has changed in the delivery and the design of curriculum. By the year 2020, the inclusion of immersive technologies will foster a new partnership between technology and pedagogy, creating a new education paradigm. Teachers and students will be thousands of miles apart, but will appear and sound like they are in the same classroom. Facilitated by unobtrusive picture and sound display devices, the infrastructure will give them a strong sense of presence-students will be able to "touch" objects in a far away museum, or "feel" forces in a virtual physics experiment. The term interactivity will be transformed from mouse clicking and instant messaging to realistic, life-size representations of teachers and classmates sitting next to each other and talking. The process of learning and teaching will undergo changes at various levels, and the term 'lifelong learning' will take on an entirely new meaning.

As these technologies get entrenched into the workplace, virtual organisations will become the norm, and employees will realise the true benefits of remote working. In the 1980s, the focus of engineering organisations was on quality through reduction of defects and use of total quality management models. In the 1990s, the focus shifted to re-engineering and streamlining processes through the use of virtual product development and enterprise resource planning. As we move from the industrial to the knowledge era, organisations will make radical changes in their workplaces. They will use ultra-powerful processors, high-capacity networks and electronic performance support systems to create virtual organisations. The workplace will be transformed from the stationary offices based on desktop computers and workstations into an intelligent networked environment that enables diverse, geographically dispersed teams to collaborate in real time in immersive multi-sensory environments.

Finally, closer home, technology will be woven into the very fabric of our lives, from the moment we wake up to when we go to sleep. Let's take, for example, the future bathroom. It will include digital mirrors, laser toothbrushes, video tiles and a smart shower, among other things. The digital mirror will include inbuilt digital cameras and will allow us to view a wide range of images, including those based on how we want to look, rather than how we actually do. We could have a great hair day every day, and look 35 when we're actually 60 years old. The advantage of this-a more confident and happier us! The toothbrush will come with either a laser or ultraviolet light source in the brush head, and use its light to kill bacteria. With future polymer displays, electronic magazines, games and shopping tablets will be available for safe use within the bath. Video tiles will be able to cover bathroom walls to provide entertainment or news while we shower or bathe. We could, if we want, be showering under a South American waterfall, or be immersed under sea at a different beach every day. Finally, imagine the daily shower area being converted into a state-of-the-art health-scan setup. As we turn the shower knob, our pulse and blood pressure for the day will be recorded, while insulin and sugar levels could simply be checked by shining an infrared light onto our bodies and analysing the reflected signals. Of course, all of this will be automatically updated into our medical records, with diet prescriptions changing on the fly, and our kitchen appliances being directed to cook only particular things for that day.

Technology and the internet, in particular, have been touted as the great equalisers, having levelled the playing field by breaking down physical barriers. People and nations have become incredibly successful because of this model. The pace at which technology is evolving and creating new paradigms for work and existence leads me to believe that unlike in the past, India will be in step with its peers to realise the true potential of global innovations. In fact, it is likely that India could lead some of these developments.

There have been many instances in the past, where India's disadvantage eventually helped it lead the pack in technology adoption and usage. For example, our late entry into the telecom industry gave us the opportunity to leapfrog into the latest and the best, while countries that were ahead of us are today stuck with infrastructure investments of the past. In the same manner, India might be able to leverage these emerging technologies to address some of the basic issues that have plagued us for years. For one, Indian students could get world-class education and holistic learning experiences at a fraction of the effort and investment other countries had to make. Another example is the efficient planning and implementation of mammoth pan-India development projects, usually marred with inefficiencies and delays. The opportunities are boundless-and if all goes well, the year 2020 could see India as the flag bearer of effective technology adoption, and a resultant world leader.