The Technology Megatrends Predictions Retrospective and Outlook

The world has never been as unpredictable as today. Technological milestones alone are being announced almost weekly, such as large language models DeepSeek, followed by Qwen2.5, and Grok 3. Socio-political, economic, and ecological development trump technology advancements and form a complex net of interdependencies. Wars are being won and lost using technology, as are the largest wins and losses on the market, and unfortunately, impact in nature. With such a speed of development and drastic impact on all facets of our lives, the ability to predict trends, especially megatrends, is becoming essential for business, technology, politics, and daily life.In computer society, we have been making annual technology predictions for over 15 years and documenting them for 10 years (see Fig. 1). In conjunction, with the IEEE Future Directions Committee, we have been exploring technology megatrends for more than two years, issuing biennial reports. Both efforts have been releasing reports and acted in a coherent, mutually supporting role even if using different approaches (online vs inperson), scope (trends vs. megatrends, technology-only vs taking into account other megatrends), and cadence (annual vs biennial). Our reports have made a tangible impact on businesses, and education, and they are widely cited and used. In this paper, we provide a short retrospective and we outline our next steps.