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It may be difficult to envision, but there is a potential future be it 10, 20 or even 30 years down the line where humans are able to plan a cozy vacation into space, blast by a series of satellites that now provide them with Internet access and have their most serious illnesses treated by allowing bioengineers to alter their DNA.

Its one possible future that proactive investors, even those in typically reactive institutional settings, have begun to place large and risky bets on becoming a reality.

In April, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan created a new department called the Teachers Innovation Platform that has a mandate to invest in disruptive tech and made its first big splash in June by backing Elon Musks SpaceX. The pension plan has particular interest in the companys Starlink project, one that aims to fire more than 11,000 satellites into low orbit, interlink them all and have them act as a new provider of Internet connectivity.

For investing ... you want to look 15 to 20 years down the line and say: 'Is this still going to be impacting peoples' lives?

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has put a similar emphasis on investing in disruptive technology, announcing in late 2018 that it had made a private investment in Zoox, a California-based company that aims to operate a fleet of robo-taxis. Only months ago, the pension plan bought US$162 million worth of Skyworks Solutions Inc., a semiconductor firm creating chips that will allow the next wave of phones to work in 5G networks.

As for retail investors, theyve likely never had as many options to hedge their portfolio toward the future. The 2019 IPO market offered them even more, bringing a basket of futuristic options to the market, including Beyond Meat Inc., a producer of plant-based meat, and Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc., the latest brainchild of Richard Branson, which is developing spacecraft that may allow for the development of a space tourism sector.

But the investors buying these stocks arent buying them with the hope that theyll hit their peak in 2020.

You have to recognize the world is changing, said Hans Albrecht, the portfolio manager for Horizons ETFs Industry 4.0 fund. Theres nothing wrong in investing in Pokemon cards if theyre hot now or whatever the latest trend may be, but thats a trade. For investing you want to look 15 to 20 years down the line and say: Is this still going to be impacting peoples lives?

It wont be long, Albrecht suspects, before his coffee maker is able to receive signals from his mug that tell it to begin brewing a new serving once hes three-quarters of the way through his first cup in the morning.

If that scenario sounds too futuristic, its one that only scratches the surface, he said. When hes running low on espresso packages, a chip in his pantry keeping track of stock may be able to automatically order more from Amazon, which at that point, may have implemented one-hour shipping, to ensure hell never run out.

Thousands of consumers already have access to smart home technology through Google Home or Amazon.com Inc.s Alexa, which allow for the linking of devices such as thermostats, lights and televisions. Its advancements in artificial intelligence and edge computing, which will effectively replace the cloud and allow for individual items in a home to process data, that will bring this technology into the future.

Figuring out how to play technology like edge computing which may very well become mainstream in a decade isnt exactly simple.

Investors will have two options: they can bet on the end point user of the technology in Albrechts coffee scenario, that would mean investing in the company that produces the coffee maker or they can look to the firms that are developing the components that power it.

Albrecht leans towards the latter, suggesting that there would be far too much competition among the end point companies while there would only be a handful of leaders on the components side. A company like Analog Devices Inc., may play a central role in the implementation of that technology because its building everything from the sensors and their networks to processors.

Investors may be able to apply similar logic with 5G, according to CIBC World Markets tech strategist Todd Coupland.

Consumers will likely only begin to see the wide rollout of 5G, which would enable devices to operate at speeds that as much as 100 times faster than the current 4G tech, in 2020. That means that it might be a bit early to invest in device producers such as Apple Inc. or Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. for that exposure. Instead, Coupland suggested investors eye a company like Keysight Technologies Inc., which builds the equipment that carriers have been using to test out their services ahead of launch.

Goldman Sachs expects 50 million to 120 million 5G devices to be active in 2020 and if that should be the case, components manufacturers in Qualcomm Inc. and Marvell Technology Group Ltd. may warrant attention as would providers such as Nokia Ovj, which already has 50 deals in place to install its radio access equipment, AirScale, around the world. The equipment supports multiple frequencies and allows for a quick transition over to 5G.

That list doesnt include the Canadian telcos and for good reason.

In Canada, Rogers and Bell, their attitude is: See how it goes in the U.S. and well be at least one year behind, Coupland said.

5Gs full potential likely wont be reached for a decade, he said, and the futuristic possibilities it opens up will likely only be reached in the second half. When combined with the power of quantum computing, managing a fleet of self-driving cars and, who knows, removing traffic lights from the streets becomes a possibility, according to Christian Weedbrook, the CEO of Toronto-based quantum computing company Xanadu.

Weedbrooks company has gained the attention of Georgian Partners, a private-sector venture capital firm that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in upstart Canadian tech companies.

What makes quantum computing, a draw for Jason Brenier, Georgians vice-president of strategy, is its ability to solve previously unsolvable problems.

Weedbrook imagines a future where quantum computers control hundreds of autonomous vehicles for Uber Inc. or Lyft Inc. and provide each individual car with the fastest route to its destination, analyzing traffic, time a trip perfectly so that red lights can be mostly or completely avoided, and in the case of a pool scenario, figure out how to do that with multiple stops.

Investing in early stage technology comes with its challenges. Because Georgian focuses on private investments, there is no stock performance to point to and not much in the way of fundamentals to rely on.

Many of these tech companies that are seeking funding from the firm may show promise but wont pan out in the future. Brenier knows this and says thats one of the reasons why Georgian has its own scientists on staff.

Instead of making blind bets on the future, Georgian turns to its applied research and development team to identify new opportunities based on new academic research and to even conduct their own in order to determine whether a new idea is actually viable.

That gives us some unique insight into how some of these things are taking off, how practical they are from an investment perspective and determining the timing of some of them, Brenier said.

The Georgian team is futurist, but theres still a limit on how far in advance they want to support a new wave of tech. We dont want to work on things that take 20 years to make a breakthrough, Brenier said.

Where breakthroughs may be even more rare for futurist investors, but the potential returns all the sweeter is in health care. The possibilities here, especially when tech plays a part of the equation, appear to be boundless.

Albrecht sees the potential in robots being able to perform surgery on humans. The portfolio manager highlighted Intuitive Surgical Inc. and its da Vinci Surgical System as an example of how this is already occurring. Through a console that offers them a 3D view of the surface area theyll be operating on, surgeons can use controllers to perform procedure with four robotic arms that offer a greater range of motion than human limbs.

Intuitive doesnt just sell the machines, it sells the accessories such as scalpels that are replaceable and need to be repeatedly ordered. So the more da Vinci units it sells, the more it opens itself up for further gains to its bottom line through accessory sales.

The next step, Albrecht said, is for this technology to allow surgeons to perform surgeries around the world remotely. After thats accomplished, humans may be removed from the equation altogether with AI.

You take the smartest doctors in the world and they might just have the slightest tremor in their hand and might not get it perfect, but a machine will come as close to that as possible, he said.

Health care now makes up about a quarter of the CIBC Global Technology Fund, which is co-managed by Michal Marszal, who has a particular interest in gene therapy.

The technology may still be in development, but Marszal said scientists will soon be able to treat certain conditions, specifically those that plague humans as a result of mutated genes, by biologically engineering new sequences to replace them.

Take haemophilia, a condition that reduces the ability of a persons blood to clot. Treating haemophilia A, which is caused due to a deficiency of a protein called factor VII, may soon be possible by removing cells from the patient, biologically engineering gene sequences with the protein in them and reinserting them.

Gilead Sciences Inc., a company that is in Marszals mutual fund, is working on gene therapy that might even be able to fight cancer. According to Marszal, the process involves removing immune cells from a human body and genetically modifying them so that they become supercharged and are better positioned to fight cancer.

The returns on investment in successful therapies are extremely high, Marszal said. Thats really the next decade or 25 years in medicine.

Thinking that far ahead may be difficult for the average investor, who is often concerned with year-end returns. But it might be worth stopping as some futurists do, even during a quiet moment like a morning coffee, to consider just how different the world will look in a decade and perhaps selfishly, how theres profit to be made from it.

Email: vferreira@nationalpost.com | Twitter:

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From space tourism to robo-surgeries: Investors are betting on the future like there's no tomorrow - Financial Post

The hype surrounding technology trends in 2020 is palpable, but not every concept will make it to market. Here are a few guesses on the failures.

Next year is anticipated to be a pivotal one for a lot of technologies, such as 5G, autonomous vehicles, and IoT, as they move forward into the consumer marketplace, in some form.

However, its unlikely that all the trends mentioned in the past few years will come to fruition in 2020. In a new whitepaper, ABI Research has compiled a list of some of those that are unlikely to make the cut.

SEE ALSO: Are You Getting the Best Results from RPA?

IoT is already a huge market for consumers (in the form of smart home devices) and enterprise (in the form of tiny modules that take all sorts of measurements and track item efficiency), but it is rather unconsolidated.

Dan Shey, VP of enabling platforms at ABI, thinks this will remain the same:

For many years, there have been predictions that the IoT platform supplier market will begin to consolidate, and it just wont happen. The simple reason is that there are more than 100 companies that offer device-to-cloud IoT platform services and for every one that is acquired, there are always new ones that come to market.

Another misconception from the industry is edge computing may overtake or cannibalize cloud growth. Kateryna Dubrova, IoT analyst at ABI, doesnt see it that way: In fact, in the future, we will see a rapid development of edge-cloud-fog continuum, where technology will complement each other, rather than cross-cannibalize.

Throughout 2019, we saw headlines confirming the arrivals of self-driving cars on our streets, but ABI analyst Susan Beardslee doubts there will be any commercially available units next year.

Quantum computing is also not coming next year, says AI and ML analyst, Lian Jye Su: Despite claims from Google in achieving quantum supremacy, the tech industry is still far away from the democratization of quantum computing technology. Quantum computing is definitely not even remotely close to the large-scale commercial deployment stage.

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What's Not Likely To Happen In 2020 - RTInsights

No Chinese company is an independent company, Norbert Rttgen, a former government minister from Ms. Merkels party, said recently, adding that Huaweis involvement was an imminent question of national security.

Yet one German telecommunication company, Telefonica Deutschland, has announced that it intends to contract Huawei for its 5G development.

European Union rules make it difficult to target individual companies for political reasons. The bloc could impose stringent standards of conduct and openness for 5G contractors that could be used to restrict Huawei but, as yet, has simply let each member country to decide how to proceed.

Distrust toward the Trump administration is also a significant factor, as European policymakers worry that American sanctions on Huawei are simply a bargaining chip in the United States broader trade war with China and might be reversed.

There is a fear that if you take what potentially are quite expensive decisions with regards to 5G because the Americans have told you that they are a security problem, and then President Trump gets a trade deal with China and suddenly Huawei is all O.K. again, then youll feel like the earth has moved under your feet, said Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Center for European Reform, a policy group in London.

Years before the advent of 5G, Huawei was establishing a major presence in Europe, where it ranks third in mobile phone sales, behind Samsung and Apple. The company says it has 12,000 employees, and 23 research and development centers in Europe, a way of building favor and familiarity with policymakers.

And it has moved boldly to position itself in Brussels.

Huawei has spent more than $3 million this year on advertising and lobbying, according to its disclosures in the European Union lobbying registry. That is more than the combined spending of its European 5G competitors, Ericsson and Nokia, and far more than its American rival, Qualcomm.

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Blocked in U.S., Huawei Touts Shared Values to Compete in Europe - The New York Times

Polands Supreme Court warned this week the eastern European country could be forced to leave the ... [+] bloc if the proposals were voted through. Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Armed with European flags in hand, thousands of protesters have marched across Poland this week in opposition of a law that could allow the government the power to fire and control the judiciary if it disagrees with its court reforms.

On Friday, Polands parliament defied Brussels by voting in favor of the controversial bill even after European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova asked authorities to hold off the vote and consult with external legal experts beforehand.

Polands ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has promised to continue reforming the countrys justice system since its re-election in Octoberbut its ideas for a judicial overhaul have caused it to clash repeatedly with Brussels.

And Polands Supreme Court warned this week the eastern European country could be forced to leave the bloc if the proposals were voted through.

Contradictions between Polish law and EU law will in all likelihood lead to an intervention by the EU institutions regarding an infringement of the EU treaties, and in the longer perspective (will lead to) the need to leave the European Union, Polands Supreme Court said in a statement on December 17.

Parliament slightly tweaked the proposals to remove a policy that would have required judges to give the names of social media accounts they use under a pseudonym.

But another controversial part of the bill was passed, which could see judges lose their jobs or face pay cuts if they question the competence of their peers appointed by a newly created court, whose impartiality has been called into question by the European Court of Justice.

The PiS, which has been in power since 2015, argues the changes are needed to tackle corruption and rid the judiciary of communist-era judges.

But the EU has continuously accused PiS of trying to politicize the judiciary. Last year, the EU forced Poland to abandon a law that lowered the retirement age for Supreme Court judges as it said it breached EU rules. And in 2017, Brussels trigged Article 7 against Polanda law that can suspend a members EU voting rightsdue to concerns about government influence on the judiciary.

Poland has become more of a distant EU member since it joined the bloc in 2004. It was the only country not to sign up to the European Commissions Green Deal and it is not a Eurozone member.

The EU has continuously accused PiS of trying to politicize the judiciary. (Photo by Beata ... [+] Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

"We [Poland] are leaving the EU step by step. It's not an exaggeration. This departs from all the norms on which the European Union is built," former EU Council president Donald Tusk, who is also a former Polish prime minister, told reporters this week.

The new law will pose a major test for the new Commission president as PiS voted for Ursula von der Leyen and was key to swaying the narrow vote in her favor.

But a Polish exit from the bloc looks unlikely, according to analysts.

It would be the EUs exit from Poland, not the other way around, said Pawel Zerka, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

Zerka believes despite the new law bringing inevitable tensions between the EU and Poland, a more likely outcome would be less EU funds being allocated to Poland and increasing frustration from Brussels.

He says while the reforms are very dangerous, they are mostly meant for internal politics.

Leader of Poland's ruling party Jaroslaw Kaczynski is facing a tight presidential election next year ... [+] (AP Photo)

The Senate will now vote on the new law for it to come into force. But PiS lost control of the upper house to the opposition in November.

And the election for the presidency next year is also looking close for PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

In theory, even if the senate vetoes the judicial reforms, the president would have a final say.

But Zerka said the president could then vote against the reforms, saying he is an homme dtat" to boost his image.

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Could Poland Be Next To Exit The European Union Due To Judicial Overhauls? - Forbes

Now that we know that Boris Johnson will get Brexit done by the end of January 2020, what are the implications for English as an official language of the European Union and in the European parliament? Could it stop being used when Britain leaves?

In 2016 Danuta Hbner, an MEP and chair of the European parliaments constitutional affairs committee, was quoted as saying, If we dont have the UK, we dont have English. But is it as simple as that?

Until the 1990s, the dominant language of the EU was French. When the EU was the EC (European Community) and the official language policy was defined, Dutch, French, German and Italian were identified as the working languages. However, as more countries joined, many of which had English as a second or additional language, the number of English speakers grew until English became the majority common language.

Currently, the EU lists 24 official and working languages. The UK is the only member country that gives English as its official language. There are a few member countries that commonly use English but have nominated a different language as their EU official language. For instance, the Republic of Ireland gives Irish Gaelic as its official language, and Malta gives Maltese.

When Britain withdraws from the EU (and leaving aside possible negotiations with Scotland or other territories), in order to remove English as an official language, as clarified in a statement on behalf of the European commission in Ireland dated 27 June 2016, there would have to be a unanimous vote in the European parliament in favour of doing so. Speaking at the time of the referendum, in 2016, the German EU commissioner Gnther Oettinger explained, We have a series of member states that speak English, and English is the world language which we all accept. So, even if there was the will to do so, getting rid of English wouldnt be straightfoward.

Even if it did come to that, would it be a knock-down blow for the language? Historically, English has weathered a number of storms. When colonies of the British empire sought to gain their independence, it may have seemed logical for English the language of the oppressors to be rejected at the same time. The fact that this did not happen, and that English is used as an official first or second language in more than 70 countries worldwide, points in part to its developing socioeconomic and political status during the 20th century. The number of speakers for whom English is an unofficial second or foreign language is greater than all other English language speakers, and continues to grow. With the decline of the British empire came the rise of the United States, which has English as its official language. Prof Lynne Murphy from the University of Sussex believes the US saved the English language. From the perspective of its use as a global lingua franca, she has got a point.

In fact, in some postcolonial situations, English is regarded as a more or less neutral language. In India, for example, English was supposed to be phased out post-independence in 1947 in favour of Hindi. However, as not everyone in India speaks Hindi, and many do not want to for various cultural and political reasons, English continued to be used, and is now an official language of India. In Hong Kong, English is still an official language despite the return of the territory to the Peoples Republic of China in 1997. As Hong Kong is an international hub for trade and finance, this makes pragmatic sense, but there is also evidence that Hong Kong people feel that the English language is part of their identity something that makes Hong Kong distinctive from mainland China. Singapore has speakers of Malay, Chinese (various dialects) and Tamil, among others; in this context, English is a unifying language.

But these Englishes are not British English, or even American English. The Englishes spoken around the world have developed their own vocabulary and grammar; Euro-English is no exception. English simply does not belong to traditional native English speakers any more: it belongs to everyone who speaks it, and it will develop and change depending on the communicative needs of speech communities. Brits and Americans need to bear this in mind when using English in international settings, as they cannot assume they will be understood by every English speaker.

So, will English cease to be a language of the EU? Probably not in the short to medium term, either in conversations between EU member countries, MEPs, or in EU interaction with other countries around the world. One Swedish MEP even suggested that communications in the EU could be fairer in English, as it will be everyones second language.

In the long term, however, the continued dominance of English as a global language may depend on its political and socioeconomic fortunes. As it is so well-established and widespread, I believe it is likely to be used as a global lingua franca for some time. But situations and languages change. I think it was Andy Hamilton who pointed out that, once Latin was everyones second language, it was no longer anyones first.

Jane Setter is professor of phonetics at the University of Reading

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Will Brexit spell the end of English as an official EU language? - The Guardian