Hi, I am a budding engineer and am trying to find an emerging computer technology field in which i can become an expert mainly to boost professional development speed.
for example A linux kernel expert is valued right at the top in many companies. (I am looking for something like this in a more emerging field so that I can be one of the first few and top few ppl in the industry which such expertise in a few years)
Hi - it's a great question... but you're kinda asking us to predict the future for you ;) As comforting as it'd be to Just Know what the Next Big Thing is going to be... unfortunately you're not going to get a definite answer.
You might get a fair few educated guesses though. :)
here's mine: multi-core processing (eg programming that truly spans multiple cores) - given that we're hitting the limit of Moore's law now, the best way for CPUs to go "up" is to scale across multiple cores... but very few programs take advantage of this yet.
IP Law. Then you can become a lawyer and get some real money and respect.
This isn't an "emerging" field (quite the opposite), but I suggest that you learn and master C++.
C++ is already one of the most complex and intricate languages out there, and it will become more so in future versions (C++0x and whatever follows it). Fewer and fewer schools are teaching C++, and fewer and fewer people are learning it on their own, preferring to use "easier" lagnuages like Java, Python, Ruby, etc.
Nonetheless, most operating systems, implementations of higher-level programming platforms like Java or Python, and performance-critical systems used in research, industry, and government are written in C++. 20, 30, 40 years down the line, most of the people who are C++ experts today will be retired or dead, and there will be a very high demand for good C++ programmers to maintain these systems, and very few programmers available to fill that demand. If you're one of those few, you will make big bucks.