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© Provided by Fool LG’s new W-Series OLED TV, Image source: LG Electronics

If there’s one thing that’s constant in the world of technology, it’s change. And almost without exception, that change inevitably applies to tech products that at one time seemed crucial to maintaining our current standards of living.

So which are next in line for obsolescence? Read on to see why I think the following tech products stand a good chance of being obsolete by the time 2025 rolls around.

1. LCD TVs

A little over a decade ago, increasingly available liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions took the world by storm with their delightfully thin physical profiles and energy efficiency. And while LCD TVs have certainly improved since then, becoming even thinner, brighter, and cheaper, manufacturers such as LG are already ramping up their production capacities for a superior successor: Organic light emitting diode (OLED) TVs.

Because OLEDs emit their own light and don’t require a backlight, they boast even greater energy efficiency and picture quality than LCD TVs. They can also be made paper thin, semi-transparent, flexible, and even rollable. At CES 2017 this month, LG even confirmed its new W-series TV (the “W” stands for “wallpaper”) is only one-tenth of an inch thick, mounts to your wall with magnetic brackets, and will hit stores later this year.

2. LED lightbulbs

© Provided by Fool Philips Lumiblade OLED lamps, IMAGE SOURCE: PHILIPS.

Relatedly, though traditional LED light bulbs are finally becoming more affordable relative to their older fluorescent counterparts, I think the lighting industry could be further disrupted as OLED lighting becomes more common. After all, while LEDs are a pointed, directional light source, OLEDs are similarly cool to the touch while also distributing beautiful, even light that’s highly energy efficient. And similar to OLED TVs, OLED lights can be made in a variety of thin and curved form factors.

In fact, the disruptive potential of OLED lighting caught my eye when it was still in its early stages in late 2014, when I noted it would take years for manufacturers such as Philips and Germany’s OSRAM to further improve OLED light pricing and energy efficiency to match that of today’s power-sipping LED bulbs. OLED lighting remains in those early stages today, but should gain momentum as it continues to improve and more manufacturers adopt it in the coming years.

3. Physical storage media

Next, it’s no mystery that optical storage media such as CDs and DVDs are quickly going away, as many consumers today prefer to transfer larger files with things such as USB flash drives and external hard drives. But even those physical storage mediums are likely to disappear given the increased prevalence and convenience of cloud storage services.

And why not? Whether you’re connected to your Wi-Fi at home or using your LTE connection through your smartphone, Internet speeds have only continued to increase along with file sizes. And companies like Box, Amazon, and Google already offer compelling, affordable (or free) cloud-based storage services making it easy to upload and access those files wherever you have a connection.

4. Gaming consoles

It might be hard to envision a world without dedicated gaming consoles such as the Xbox One or PlayStation 4. But if companies such as NVIDIA(NASDAQ: NVDA) have anything to do with it, console-free, cloud-based gaming will take over in the coming years.

Consider, for example, NVIDIA’s GeForce Now game-streaming service, which allows gamers to instantly stream more than 100 AAA games instantly at 60 frames per second and 1080 resolution, all with ultra-low latency and without requiring updates or downloads. In short, the games are hosted on NVIDIA’s own remote servers, and powered by its Kepler-based GPUs and Tegra processors. This allows NVIDIA to introduce the latest gaming technology as soon as it’s available rather than requiring consumers to go out and purchase new hardware.

5. Automotive mirrors

© Provided by Fool Image source: Gentex

Of course, car mirrors aren’t exactly what most people would consider a “tech product,” with the notable exception of automatically dimming mirrors from companies such as Gentex(NASDAQ: GNTX). But Gentex has also touted increasing adoption of its full-display mirror product in recent quarters, with five OEMs so far sourcing the company as a supplier of the new product for their respective vehicles.

Add to that a U.S. Department of Transportation rule put in place last year that will require back-up cameras in all new cars by May 2018, as well as the increasing prevalence of self-driving vehicles, and there soon won’t be a need for today’s low-tech mirrors.

6. Wired chargers

Samsung (NASDAQOTH: SSNLF) has already incorporated wireless induction charging into its latest and greatest smartphones — just set the phone down on a pad and let it charge, no plugs or adapters required. And the latest rumors surrounding Apple‘s (NASDAQ: AAPL) upcoming flagship smartphone indicate the folks in Cupertino are set to follow suit later this year, adding wireless charging capabilities to the iPhone line for the first time in company history. It seems only fair, then, to assume other manufacturers will follow suit as consumers grow accustomed to the relative convenience of wireless charging in the next few years.

Looking even further ahead, research teams have also identified opportunities to capture the small amount of power transmitted through Wi-Fi signals and use it to charge an array of different devices without any physical contact at all.

© Provided by Fool Amazon’s Echo Dot, IMAGE SOURCE: AMAZON.COM 7. Remote controls

Long a staple of living room entertainment, the days of dedicated remote controls are nearly over thanks to the advent of voice-operated devices that can accomplish the same tasks.

For instance, I can already quite literally ask the Kinect sensor plugged into my Xbox One to adjust my TV’s volume, change the channel, open any game, or power down the system. And it’s hardly surprising Amazon Echo was Amazon.com’s best-selling device in all of 2016. The hands-free, voice-controlled product allows users to do everything from ordering a pizza to playing music, calling a ride from Uber, controlling their smart-home devices, and buying items from Amazon.com itself, to name only a few.

8. Physical credit cards

According to Bloomberg, over 80% of consumer spending in the U.S. is already cashless. And thanks to services like PayPal and Apple Pay, completing those cashless transactions increasingly doesn’t even require a physical credit card to be present. What’s more, with countries like India rapidly shifting away from cash, and given the rapid proliferation of smartphones with access to the aforementioned digital payment services on a global scale, I won’t be the least bit surprised if plastic credit cards represent little more than unnecessary wallet-thickeners in another eight years.

9. Passwords

To be fair, a password isn’t exactly a tech product. But try telling that to the suppliers of biometric sensors that have already started to replace the alphanumeric character passwords on many of today’s smartphones and laptops. The right fingerprint placed on your iPhone, for example, does everything from unlocking the device to signing into your credit card provider’s app, or making monetary purchases through the app store. Over the longer term, facial recognition technology — similar to, say, the surprisingly accurate suggestions within Facebook‘s “tag friends” feature in your photos — will be able to more effectively distinguish between individuals on a live basis and grant permissions accordingly.

10. Media streaming devices

As useful and popular as media streaming devices like Chromecast, Roku, Fire TV, and Apple TV have become, their utility will only fade as their core functionality — that is, to turn any TV into a “smart” TV — is increasingly built into a higher number of new television sets. According to IHS, more than half of all TV sets shipped globally last year were smart TVs, and that number should continue to grow going forward. As it does, the number of dedicated media streaming devices shipped will fall.

11. Upright vacuums

© Provided by Fool Image source: iRobot

Finally, traditional vacuums will likely continue to lose share to their smaller robotic cousins. To be sure, in 2014 iRobot(NASDAQ: IRBT) CEO Colin Angle noted the robotic vacuum cleaner market accounted for around 15% of total global vacuum sales. That might not sound impressive, but Angle elaborated that this share was roughly similar to “other disruptive household appliances such as the microwave oven and dishwasher at the same stage in their life cycles, 10 to 15 years following introduction.”

Angle added, “We believe that as awareness of the category continues to expand, we could see an adoption rate similar to those other appliances.”

And iRobot hasn’t slowed down since. Consumer robot revenue in its most recent quarter climbed 23% year over year, to $168 million. That included 13.3% growth in domestic home robot sales, to $65.5 million, thanks to strong demand for its high-end Roombas, as well as greater than 30% growth internationally, as iRobot delivered early Roomba and Braava floor sweeping robot shipments to a new Chinese distributor.

Over the long term, as more consumers realize robotic vacuums are a viable replacement for their manual upright models, I suspect traditional vacuums will collect dust in a very different way.

Courtesy: MSN

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Over the past two decades, green and sustainable construction has evolved from a fringe movement to achieving mainstream status. In a recent study conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton for the USGBC, they expect green construction spending to increase from $150.6 billion in 2015 to $224.4 billion in 2018. The study also predicts that between 2015 and 2018, green construction will generate $303.4 billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), support 3.9 million jobs and provide $268.4 billion in labor earnings.

Drivers of Green Building

Market and client demand have been two of the major forces driving green construction. Over the past few years, we have also seen a number of state and local governments adopting regulations, requirements and initiatives focused on green and sustainable buildings.

Reducing energy usage and water usage are the top environmental issues driving green construction. In 2015, residential and commercial buildings accounted for nearly 40% of U.S. energy consumption, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Reducing construction waste, lowering greenhouse gas emissions and conserving natural resources are some of the other environmental concerns that are forcing us to reevaluate how our buildings are constructed.

A number of states including Maryland, Washington and Colorado have green requirements for state-funded public building construction and renovations. The California Public Utility Commission has set net zero energy goals for all new residential construction by 2020 and commercial buildings by 2030. Zero net energy buildings create as much renewable energy as the building consumes in a year. Federal agencies like the General Services Administration and the Department of Defense also have green requirements for new construction and major renovations.

The private sector is also in on the action. Companies like REI, Columbia, PNC Bank and Harris Teeter all have green retail locations. Kohl’s Department Stores announced a major commitment to conserving the environment by encouraging long-term sustainability.

Walgreens built the world’s first net-zero energy retail store in Evanston, IL. The new store produces renewable energy from three separate sources: a geothermal energy system, over 800 solar panels and two 35-foot wind turbines. Corporations like Google, Apple, Facebook, Starbucks and Nike have all committed to using 100% renewable energy for their operations.

Here are some of the trends shaping the future of green and sustainable construction.

Renewable Energy

Renewable energy, primarily solar, wind and geothermal, continue to gain in popularity as sustainable alternatives to power the built environment. Solar panels are being integrated into everything from roof shingles to building façades to road pavers.

Initiatives like the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change and net zero energy building goal in California are moving us toward greater adoption of clean and renewable energy sources. Earlier this year at the North America Leader’s Summit, the leaders of these three countries established a continental goal of converting to 50% clean energy by 2025.

Net zero energy buildings, buildings that create as much energy as they consume, and even net positive energy buildings, buildings that generate more energy than they consume, are coming to the forefront. Net zero and net positive energy buildings happen through a combination of design, energy efficiencies and renewable energy production. Use of renewable energy is rapidly increasing as costs to implement continue to fall.

Healthier Buildings

Constructing healthier buildings has been gaining in popularity over the past few years. Owners and developers have started realizing the benefits of healthy buildings, for both the building occupants and their bottom line. Two of the main contributors to delivering a healthy building is improved or increased daylighting and better air quality.

Eliminating the presence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in building products such as furniture, paints and carpeting can go a long way in improving air quality in a building.  VOCs are compounds that can easily become vapors or gases and short-term exposure can cause irritation of the eyes and respiratory tract, headaches and dizziness. Long-term expose can damage organs such as the liver and kidneys as well as the central nervous system.

A move to create greater transparency in building products to satisfy the need for architects and specifiers to be able to identify building products that are healthy, sustainable and environmentally friendly. The two most well-known and widely used building product declarations are environmental product declarations (EPDs) and health product declarations (HPDs).

HPDs concentrate on disclosing a building product’s list of ingredients and their health effects. EPDs focus on the environmental impacts of a building product throughout its lifecycle. EPDs provide a building product’s environmental data based on its life cycle assessment (LCA).

The WELL Building Standard, launched in 2014, focuses on enhancing the health and well-being of people through the built environment. The standard measures, certifies and monitors building occupant health and well-being in seven categories:  air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and mind.

Green & Sustainable Building Materials

According to a study by BCC Research, the U.S. market for green building materials is expected to grow from $43 billion in 2014 to $69 billion in 2019. Green building materials cover those that are made from renewable resources, are recyclable at the end of their life, manufactured using environmentally friendly processes, made from salvaged, recycled or waste content or is beneficial to the interior built environment.

Concrete and steel are two of the most commonly used building materials in the world. The problem is the production of steel and concrete materials account for about 8 – 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions annually. Innovations in the manufacturing processes of these two building materials are helping to reduce those emission amounts, but we’re still a long way off from being able to call them green and sustainable building materials. This is why there has been a push from some advocates to use mass timber in place of steel and concrete in larger projects such as skyscrapers.

Examples of mass timber include cross-laminated timber (CLT), laminated strand lumber, laminated veneer lumber and glue-laminated timber. If the timber is sourced responsibly, it provides a completely sustainable and renewable building material. Carbon emissions from manufacturing mass timber products are a fraction of those created by the production of steel and concrete and CO₂ absorbed during the tree’s life remains trapped in the building products produced.

The Cradle to Cradle Certified Products Standard (C2C) is a certification tool used to rate the green profile of manufactured products covering everything from building materials to clothing to office supplies. The C2C verification focuses on a product’s toxicology, recyclability and manufacturing processes. To get certified, a product must satisfy material health, material reutilization, renewable energy, water stewardship and social fairness benchmarks.

Stringent Building Certification Programs

For years, LEED was the only game in town when it came to green building rating systems. In 2000, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) only had 24 projects certified in its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. Today, that number has grown to 26,643 certified projects in the U.S. comprising nearly 3.5 billion gross square feet of building space.

The USGBC established their LEED rating system back in 1998. The current iteration, LEED v4, was launched in 2013 and expanded to cover 21 market sector adaptations by including things like data centers, existing schools and warehouses and data centers. With each new version of LEED, new credits and prerequisites are added or altered to incrementally create a more rigorous certification process. This measured approach, while strengthening the standards, has made it easier to adapt to stricter requirements with each new version.

The Living Building Challenge, which is administered by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), is hands down the most stringent green and sustainable building certification program. To be certified as a Living Building, the project must meet the requirements seven performance areas or “Petals”. The seven Petals include site, energy, water, health, materials, equity and beauty. The seven Petals are subdivided into 20 imperatives with each imperative required to be met in order for a project to be certified as a Living Building. These imperatives include requiring that the building is built on a previously developed site which includes greyfields and brownfields. The project also has to achieve net zero water and net zero energy.

The International Green Construction Code (IgCC), while not a rating system, was developed to govern the environmental impact of buildings and structures through model code regulations that promote green and sustainable construction. The IgCC was developed in conjunction with a handful of sponsors including the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and ASTM International. Adoption of the IgCC has been on the rise with cities like Dallas and Baltimore adopting it as mandatory with a few exemptions.

Conclusion

Other trends to keep an eye on in green and sustainable construction include:

• Diversion of nonhazardous materials to landfills by recycling construction waste and deconstructing, rather than demolishing, buildings. This means waste that would otherwise end up in landfills gets recycled or reused in other building materials.
• Reducing water usage by through rain harvesting and blackwater and greywater treatment systems.
• Improving energy efficiency with things like cool roofs, green roofs, LED lighting, increased natural lighting and using low-emittance windows and glazing. Energy monitoring and management systems and advancements in heating and cooling systems such as displacement ventilation will all aid in reducing energy use in buildings.

Courteey: constructconnect.com

Food security is a major concern for our rapidly growing planet. As resources dwindle and the population rises, smart solutions for better agriculture and safer food storage are essential.

On Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu in Israel, a company called Bio-Bee breeds beneficial insects and mites for biological pest control and bumblebees for natural pollination in greenhouses and open fields. Subsidiary Bio-Fly sells sterile Mediterranean fruit flies to control this major pest in fruit trees.

R&D manager Dr. Shimon Steinberg told ISRAEL21c the company’s top seller worldwide is two-millimeter-long, pear-shaped orange spider that is a highly efficient enemy of the spider mite, a devastating agricultural pest.

“Sixty percent of California strawberries since 1990 are treated with this predatory mite from the Holy Land,” he reported. In Israel, Bio-Bee products have enabled sweet-pepper farmers to reduce the use of chemical pesticides by 75 percent.

Bio-Bee exports eight different species of biological control agents, plus pollinating bumblebees, to 32 nations from Japan to Chile. Bio-Fly collaborates with Jordanian and West Bank Palestinian Authority agricultural experts.

Courtesy: israel21c.org

Probably no other advancement has been quite as significant as drip irrigation. While the concept of drip irrigation existed well before Israeli statehood, it was revolutionized by Israeli water engineer Simcha Blass, who serendipitously discovered that a slow and balanced drip led to remarkable growth. He created tubing that slowly released water where it was most effective, and in 1965 Kibbutz Hatzerim built a whole new industry, Netafim, based on his invention.

Israeli drip and micro-irrigation solutions rapidly spread worldwide. The newest models are self-cleaning and maintain uniform flow rate regardless of water quality and pressure.

Just one recent example of how this method has impacted food supply in foreign countries is Tipa, literally “Drop,” an Israeli-developed kit that has allowed 700 farming families in Senegal to reap crops three times a year instead of just once, even on infertile land.

Tipa is “a simple drip irrigation system that uses gravity when there is no water supply or water pressure coming to rural areas,” MASHAV’s Ilan Fluss told ISRAEL21c. The organization has similar activities in Kenya, South Africa, Benin and Niger.

Courtesy: israel21c.org