As future-minded business leaders are looking to proceed, from simply using multiple digital tools available to them towards finding, evaluating, and implementing new ones, DARQ plays an essential role. It’s not only about the usage of technology but also about the interaction of business partners, individuals, and employees through technology.
What is DARQ?
DARQ describes the new technologies that are on the rise, namely: (D)istributed Ledger Technology, (A)rtificial Intelligence, Extended (R)eality, and (Q)uantum Computing. While each of the technology itself already opens up huge opportunities for businesses, applying them collectively will create unimagines paths into the future. While DARQ is essential, it cannot work for companies, that haven’t mastered the necessity of the so-called SMAC areas. SMAC represents (S)ocial, (M)obile, (A)nalytics, and (C)loud.
While AI is seen as the most important technology within the DARQ bundle, mostly because it’s the most commonly tested and used technology out of the pack, the combination of all four technological advances will be the essential topic to focus on. 92% of respondents in global research of Accenture answered, that they see the combination of those technologies as the biggest driver for transformation within their company.
Is DARQ beneficial?
Even though DARQ surfaced in multiple reports in 2019 already, it still seems like it’s on the verge of being actually evaluated by companies. While companies are still making their first experiences with one of the technologies, only a small number of companies is actually already trying to combine several of them. Further, a lot of companies are already struggling with the technologies of SMAC, making it even more complicated for them to proceed with the DARQ technologies. At the same time, most of the bigger digital leaders already succeed in the usage of the SMAC technology, enjoying a competitive and strategic advantage to proceed with the implementation with and improvement through DARQ technologies, leaving the others even further behind. While those companies are likely to benefit, it’s hard to tell how that advantage will impact the others, probably requiring governments to step in to avoid further monopoly formation.
iRobot incoming
The following paragraph is neither scientifically proven nor relevant for the technologies themselves. However, I want to share it since I found it interesting to think about:
While researching, I stumbled across the coincidence of DARQ being an abbreviation for technologies, that pose the risk of obscuring processes, ecosystems, and functionality from human beings.
Distributed Ledger Technology, like Blockchain, uses anonymization, making it harder to identify individuals within the ecosystems. So people are fading away “into the darkness”.
There is some similarity to Artificial Intelligence. While right now most algorithms still need human interaction to be improved, at a certain point the algorithms are thought to improve by themselves. If that point is reached, humans could lose traction of what is going on inside systems. The algorithms would become “black boxes”, delivering what they are designed to, but without individuals knowing how they are doing so.
I talked about Extended Reality (XR) in my other article, and from what I wrote it could be inferred that XR could make reality and fantasy merge to a point, where people have a hard time distinguishing between both. Missing interaction could turn people into “shadows” of themselves, not leaving their houses or apartments anymore, living in the digital space only…
For Quantum Computing I couldn’t think of an analogy to the “darkness” part, but since it will be the driver to enable, and improve the technologies it’s simply part of it 😉
What’s your take? Is it just a coincidence or is DARQ a statement?
Sources:
https://www.accenture.com/de-de/insights/technology/new-emerging-technologies-darq
https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insights/communications-media/darqpower-new-emerging-technologies
https://www.computerwoche.de/a/von-darq-technik-und-momentanen-maerkten,3548122
