Futurist says Aussies will keep working from home but well be getting rid of passwords and returning to the cinema in 2022 – 7NEWS

Get used to working from home, because futurist and author Michael McQueen says thats one trend thats here to stay.

And Zoom isnt the only technology set to become a permanent part of our daily lives - cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are set to have a big impact too.

Watch the video above to see how technology will continue to advance in 2022

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Mr McQueen joined The Morning Show to look at whats in store for our immediate futures.

Theres been lots of talk in the last two years about the demise of the office, interestingly the most recent modelling has about 10 per cent of companies (expecting to) stay fully remote when (the pandemic) is all done, he said.

About 30 per cent will actually go back to the office full-time, but then about 60 per cent will do that whole hybrid of a few days in the office and a few days at home.

Whats driving that is the desire for culture, collaboration, particularly among young staff who are struggling with remote work.

Its not just where we do work but how many days a week well do work that will be interesting, Mr McQueen added.

With four-day working weeks being trialled this year both in the UK and US, Mr McQueen said many Australian companies will be monitoring the results with interest.

Theres a lot of push toward this four-day work week, it wont work in every industry obviously. Well watch this from June to December, The University of Cambridge and Oxford are doing this as a nationwide trial and it will be very interesting to see how it goes, he said.

Meanwhile, with cryptocurrency Bitcoin now becoming legal tender in some countries, Mr McQueen explained what this could mean local businesses.

Its been a bumpy time for Bitcoin in terms of valuations. Last year was really significant, so for instance PayPal announced they would now accept cryptocurrency like Bitcoin as payment.

But the big thing was El Salvador who last year were the first country in the world to accept it as legal national tender.

And this is significant because as we speak today in El Salvador more people own a Bitcoin wallet than have a bank account, and we expect a few other countries to follow suit as Panama and Paraguay are expected to follow suit this year, he said.

The author of The New Now also explained that the struggle to remember various login passwords combined with a rise in security breaches may see our use of online passwords scrapped altogether.

On average we have about two hundred passwords weve got to maintain. Well probably see those become less necessary over the next few years which is exciting for all of us.

Biometrics (will replace passwords) so using things like our retina, fingerprints, facial recognition even voice recognition. So in the last few months for instance, Microsoft has rolled out a new update, if youre using Windows 10 or 11 you can actually set that up without a password at all, he explained.

Finally, in a big boost for movie cinemas, Mr McQueen explained that despite the rise in popularity of streaming services such as Netflix during the pandemic, movie cinemas are expecting audiences to return in the coming months.

2022 will be the year we discover what we actually missed or what didnt change throughout the pandemic, and one of them is our desire to go back to the movies.

The expectation is a 58 per cent jump this year in box office sales, but it will not be before 2023 that we get back to pre-pandemic levels of going to the movies, but were on our way back, he said.

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Futurist says Aussies will keep working from home but well be getting rid of passwords and returning to the cinema in 2022 - 7NEWS