Scientific American's describes their Top 10 Emerging Technologies Of 2019 as "World-changing technologies that are poised to rattle the status quo."
Key article quote on the technologies:
One day soon an emerging technology highlighted in this report will allow you to virtually teleport to a distant site and actually feel the handshakes and hugs of fellow cyber travelers. Also close to becoming commonplace: humanoid (and animaloid) robots designed to socialize with people; a system for pinpointing the source of a food-poisoning outbreak in just seconds; minuscule lenses that will pave the way for diminutive cameras and other devices; strong, biodegradable plastics that can be fashioned from otherwise useless plant wastes; DNA-based data-storage systems that will reliably stow ginormous amounts of information; and more.
It's a great list and hard to argue these technologies won't have a big impact.
But you could easily argue about when "one day soon" will be.
By far the hardest part of technology forecasting is timing.
Identifying trends is pretty easy. For example, it's not hard to predict that AI will improve and have a big future impact.
What is hard is identifying when the impact will occur.
Back in 2014, there were lots of forecasts that AI-based driverless cars would be common by 2020. There were also many forecasts that many professions - accounting, medicine, law, etc. - would be disrupted by AI by 2020.
These forecasts were obviously wrong.
So while we agree that the technologies in this list will have a big impact, whether or not the impact is "soon" will depend on your definition of "soon".
All of the technologies listed are under development.
And a few (social robots, for example) have reached the point where there are in-market examples.
But don't expect widely commercialized versions of most of these technologies for at least another 10 years, and in some cases much longer.
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