What industry/field are going to change the world during next decade?

What's your opinion? Will it still be the Information technology?

If you're thinking in terms of where the money is, probably services aqnd products for the aged and soon-to-be aged and retired.

That's a major issue across the Western and parts of the Eastern world.

I suspect gold will show it's intrinsic characteristics of value-storing, desire-inspiration - and restraint upon the printing of paper money, or at least the value of paper money. We're already seeing gold ATMs springing up...

But the big one, the really big one (apart from possible breakthroughs in nano-tech), I'm keeping to myself :)

I believe Information Technology (both increased capacity/reduced price to transport (fiber), process and store data, but also to present information (displays, projectors, new types). I believe that this will be combined with new types of sensors (better vision, smelling?) and robots (not for entertainment, but for doing work). In addition, comes software innovations, which can have major impacts. Examples are wikipedia, Google etc. These combinations means that Information Technology has major potential.

Maybe there will be drastically new transportation methods, which has lead to revolutions earlier. There has been no significant innovations in transportation, which has affected the life of normal people during the last thirty or so years. Prices has gone down, more infrastructure, but nothing drastic like with flight in the beginning of the last century. These new transportation methods, might not need major investments in infrastucture, which means that they can be deployed within a decade.

I also believe that entirely new fields will arise, which solves problems that we are not really aware of now. This could also come within a decade. Maybe the invention of electricity is an example of such an innovation.

I do not believe that there will come much from energy that will change the lives of normal people.

Biotechnology will probably cure some major diseases (AIDS/Cancer), which naturally has a major impact on normal people.

There should also come some major news from material science, changing a range of fields. This could be with condictivity, stronger materials, more heat resistance etc.

I also believe that deployment of things that are not innovations at all, like building infrastructure to provide clean water, or provide basic heathcare in poorer countries will have a major impact on normal people. These fields mostly require hard work and not so much innovation or thinking new.

Every industry changes the word. During the next decade it is very probably that we will see the same trends: improved wireless communication, smart home appliances, improved context-based services (location info, mobile live cams, speech recognition).