Heinrich von Pierer

President and CEO, Siemens AG

Most Important Technology of the Last 40 Years:

The development of the transistor.

Most Important Technology for the Coming Decade:

The Internet.

Technology That has Evolved in a Surprising Way:

Medical imaging technologies. With molecular imaging, we will one day be able to penetrate into even smaller areas—for instance, to measure tumor activity in individual cells.

"Technologies based on the IP [Internet Protocol] standard will penetrate into many other areas. In the future, a device may have just a single IP interface to the outside and several different modems working inside that understand the different transmission standards. In the "intelligent house" of tomorrow, an Internet gateway will serve as the mediator between the outside world and the house's internal networks. Internet technology is also making inroads into industry [toward] a uniform communications infrastructure that extends from production to office software—which will yield considerable productivity gains."