The technological marvels of the past are sprinkled across the landscape of Central Pennsylvania — from the towering stacks of power plants to the massive combine harvesters that will soon be mowing down row after row of corn.
The technologies of tomorrow are harder to spot, but they are slowly making themselves felt on the region’s construction sites, factory floors and office cubicles.
Drones are making panoramic aerial shots as prosaic as selfies. Robots are elbowing their way onto production lines. And software products are providing new tools for exploring, understanding and acting on the bottomless pools of data available to us.
At the Central Penn Business Journal, we decided to look more closely at how the region’s largest private companies are using — and preparing for — the tools of tomorrow.
In addition to asking them for revenue and other baseline information, we asked companies what technologies they have incorporated, as well as what they consider likely to appear down the road.
We couldn’t include everything companies told us about. But we hope the results are as educational for readers as they have been for us.
We learned about artificial intelligence and augmented reality, flying taxis and data visualization, among other cutting-edge tools. Companies also shared how they are advancing more established technologies, like online sales and solar power.
New for us this year is publication of the full list of Top 250 private companies. In the past, we printed the Top 100 and put the remaining 150 online. This year, they are all on paper, an old technology that has not lost its place.