This blog is a summary of an interesting internal discussion we had among analysts. I’d like to extend my thanks to Jessica Liu, Martha Bennett, Fatemeh Khatibloo, Brigitte Majewski, Sucharita Kodali, and Benjamin Ensor who all helped with the thinking. I’m merely putting the pieces together for you here, because connecting the dots is where I come in at Forrester . . .
As I ramp up an effort to refresh our report on top technology trends to watch, one of the things I find most interesting is how technologies build upon and accelerate each other (see the law of accelerating returns). For one thing, we have to wrestle as a society with a number of moral dilemmas that I consider part of digital ethics. Facebook, Inc. (inclusive of the Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook’s Audience Network, and its other apps, services, and hardware) is the best example. It has become a new world superpower; but instead of nukes, it combines technologies in order to accelerate disruption and expand its influence at a scale we simply can’t grasp. This is forcing us to pay attention to digital ethics and wonder what the new reality that Facebook is helping create means to businesses and consumers.
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