  Advances in astronomy are often enabled by adoption of new technology. In
some instances this is where the technology has been invented specifically for
astronomy, but more usually it is adopted from another scientific or industrial
area of application. The adoption of new technology typically occurs via one of
two processes. The more usual is incremental progress by a series of small
improvements, but occasionally this process is disruptive, where a new
technology completely replaces an older one. One of the activities of the
OPTICON Key Technology Network over the past few years has been a technology
forecasting exercise. Here we report on a recent event which focused on the
more radical, potentially disruptive technologies for ground-based, optical and
infrared astronomy.
