Future Technology Themes: 2030 to 2060

In support of Air 07036, DSTO seeks to explore new areas of technology that might be available over the next 20 to 50 years. There is a vast body of literature on the direction the developments in future technologies may take. Described here is a literature coding method that was developed for the purposes of this study. The method selects only sources that originate from expert views and applies a weighting scheme that aims to ensure the inclusion of independent and unique perspectives. The result is a diverse, ranked list of 100 future technologies appearing out to 2060 based on an analysis of the open literature. The report also includes a brief discussion of future environmental issues that form the context to the hypothesised technological developments. This technique developed here is suitable for conducting traceable and thorough literature reviews with limited analytical resources.