Full report (12 volumes plus volume 0, 504 pages) from the publisher Dropbox link that the 2021techtrends.com/Full-Report short link redirected to (Wayback capture 2021-04-02); the Dropbox file was still live on 2026-10-01. Labels are the regular-weight entries of each volume contents page, in printed order; medium-weight entries are sub-sections. Volume 0, Expert Insight essays, Scenario, Application, Key Questions and Sources entries are excluded. Volume names abbreviate the cover titles. PDF created 2021-03-08; launched at SXSW in March 2021. Update 2026-10-02 (D40): umbrella section pages that carry the year tag and a KEY INSIGHT count as trends; 10 were appended as entries 495-504 (scripts/ftsg-tech-trends/append_umbrella_d40.py).
As machine learning matures and new applied business solutions emerge, developers are shifting their focus from building models to operating them.
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Machine learning is transitioning, as new platforms allow businesses to leverage the power of AI to build applications without the need to know specific code.
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AI can now measure biomarkers that suggest a person’s emotional state, such as agitation, sadness, or giddiness.
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Research teams at Loving AI and Hansen Technologies are teaching machines unconditional love, active listening, and empathy.
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AWS, Alibaba Cloud, Microsoft’s Azure, Google Cloud, and Baidu Cloud are rolling out new offerings and packages for developers with the goal of making it easier and more affordable for a wide swath of AI startups to launch their ideas into the marketplace.
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Corporate leaders within the AI ecosystem have been racing to capture AI cloudshare—and to become the most trusted provider of AI on remote servers.
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AI-driven processing and decision-making that occurs closer to the source of data generation, as opposed to in the cloud, is a technique known as “edge computing.”
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Digital twins are virtual representations of real-world environments, products, or assets for a variety of purposes.
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In the past year, researchers showed how AI could be used to compose text so good that humans couldn’t tell it was machine written.
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Companies are moving toward new environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria—a set of standards increasingly used by investors to evaluate their investments.
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An ongoing challenge is getting machines to recognize the various ways we express ourselves in writing.
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Robotic process automation (RPA) can automate certain tasks and processes within offices and allow employees to spend time on higher-value work.
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In 2020, Facebook launched a new open-source AI language model called M2M-100 that can translate 100 languages.
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Computer vision can anticipate and identify failures in physical locations.
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Who’s to blame when machines behave badly?
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Amazon, Google, and Facebook have all come under fire in the past few years for manipulating their search systems to prioritize results that are more profitable for their companies.
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There is a global race to fund AI research and to acquire AI startups.
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Traditional software has a short and unpredictable shelf life compared with other engineering tools.
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Running experiments with several variables often requires tiny, methodical tweaks to measurements, materials, and inputs.
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COVID-19 accelerated the use of AI in drug discovery.
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New medical algorithms address the level of patient care in the U.S. Different patients experience symptoms differently, and their care is based on how they describe their symptoms and how those symptoms are interpreted by doctors.
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Radiologists and pathologists increasingly rely on AI to assist them with diagnostic medical imaging.
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Natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, which are typically used for text, words, and sentences, are being used to interpret genetic changes in viruses.
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The Covid Symptom Study—created by doctors and scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, King’s College London and Stanford University School of Medicine, and health science company ZOE—developed an app to study Covid symptoms and track the spread of the virus.
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In November 2020, DeepMind’s AI made a big announcement: It successfully determined a protein’s 3D shape from its amino-acid sequence.
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Scientists discovered how to establish two-way communication channels between lucid dreamers.
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Deep neural networks are being used to analyze emotional states using wireless signals.
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Modern interfaces are able to do more for us with fewer direct actions—yet still captivate our attention.
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Low-code and no-code offerings from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud will start to trickle down to everyday people, who will create their own AI applications and deploy them as easily as they can a website.
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Faceswap is a free and open-source deepfake app powered by TensorFlow, Keras, and Python.
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A number of startups are building customizable, trainable platforms capable of learning from you—and then representing you online via personal digital twins.
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Code is important for reproducibility, accountability, and transparency, and it is a key to driving improvements in the greater AI community.
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The General Language Understanding Evaluation (GLUE) benchmark is a collection of resources for training, evaluating, and analyzing natural language understanding systems.
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For AI researchers, machine reading comprehension (MRC) has been a challenging goal, but an important one.
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A new AI model can summarize scientific literature, including research about itself.
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Training robots to do more than one thing is difficult, but a new model pits identical robot arms against one another in a game (moving objects on a virtual table in specific ways) in which one robot challenges the other with increasingly difficult tasks.
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Because we perceive scents using millions of sensory neurons in our brains, and because scents are multifaceted, predicting the way something will smell is incredibly complex.
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Federated learning is a technique that distributes machine learning to the edge.
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Gaussian processes (GP) are the gold standard for many real-world modeling problems, especially in cases where a model’s success hinges on its ability to faithfully represent predictive uncertainty.
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The enormous AI that generates human-like language, GPT-3, was released by OpenAI last year.
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Models like GPT-3 are trained on syntax and grammar, not creativity or common sense.
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If a computer system has access to enough images—say, millions and millions—it can patch and fill in holes in pictures.
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Computer vision systems are getting smarter.
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Dreamer is a reinforcement learning (RL) agent that uses a world model to learn long-sighted predictions, employing backpropagation through model predictions.
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One big challenge in AI is building machines that can proactively collect and interpret data, spot patterns and incorporate context, and ultimately learn in real time.
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Some organizations want to move away from traditional machine learning methods, which are time-consuming and difficult and require data scientists, specialists in AI fields, and engineers.
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AI isn’t yet capable of fully functioning without human assistance.
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The development of AI has been on two conceptual tracks since the 1950s: symbolic (machines that use a base of knowledge and rules that represent concepts) and non-symbolic (machines that use raw data to create their own patterns and representations of concepts).
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Researchers are developing single algorithms that can learn multiple tasks.
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At the moment, deep learning techniques are helping systems learn to solve complex tasks in a way that resembles what humans can do—but those tasks are still specific, such as beating a human at a game.
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Algorithms are simply rules that define and automate the treatment of data.
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Python is a leading language with lots of pre-built libraries and frameworks.
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The brain drain of AI researchers out of academia and into corporations is growing at an alarming pace.
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Interestingly, new institutions solely focused on AI are launching around the world and offering postsecondary education.
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For many years, demand for AI talent has outpaced supply.
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AI labs are located around the world, with concentrations in North America, Europe, and Asia.
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Recognition systems can now be deployed to watch you being interviewed and to gauge your enthusiasm, tenacity, and poise.
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Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are capable of far more than generating deepfake videos.
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Last year, the creators of “South Park” built an entire show using deepfakes.
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Chip designer Nvidia is teaching AI to build realistic 3D environments from short video clips.
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Journalists at Switzerland-based Tamedia experimented with generative techniques during their country’s 2018 election.
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Anyone who’s ever recorded a podcast is familiar with editing challenges such as guests talking over each other, interruptions from sirens and other background noises, and inconvenient sneezes.
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For some time, we’ve been training computers to watch videos and predict corresponding sounds in our physical world.
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Governments are instituting new restrictions on mergers and acquisitions and investment activity to ensure that AI developed by companies does not aid foreign adversaries.
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A new wave of countries will launch national AI strategies in 2021 and 2022.
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Government researchers are exploring ways to spearhead AI development for critical systems use: road and rail transportation systems; power generation and distribution; and predicting routes for public safety vehicles, such as ambulances and firetrucks.
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From self-driving car accidents to election interference through disinformation campaigns to political repression enhanced by facial recognition and automated surveillance, major events over the past few years have thrown into sharp relief the dangers of artificial intelligence.
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New measures to regulate the creation and distribution of deepfakes will be introduced throughout 2021 in the U.S. and elsewhere.
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You’ve undoubtedly heard someone argue that AI is becoming a “black box”— that even researchers working in the field don’t understand how our newest systems work.
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New strategic technical alliances between countries will help drive future R&D but could also strain existing geopolitical alliances or heighten tensions.
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In the past few years, some of the biggest AI companies in the U.S. have partnered with the military to advance R&D and find efficiencies.
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Future wars will be fought in code, using data and algorithms as powerful weapons.
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On Dec. 2, 2020, Timnit Gebru, the colead of Google’s ethical AI team, posted a tweet saying she’d been fired.
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What happens behind closed doors may not be secret for long, and executives should beware new ambient surveillance methods.
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As much as the AI ecosystem booms, a rush of acquisitions means consolidation, too.
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It’s no secret AI has a serious and multifaceted bias problem.
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In 2018, researchers at MIT developed an AI called Norman that was trained to perform image captioning.
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There is no question that machine learning systems trained correctly can help find missing children and detect abuse.
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Computers do exactly what they are told to do.
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Artificial intelligence will inevitably lead to a shift in the global workforce, causing job losses across many industries.
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We will soon reach a point when we will no longer be able to tell if a dataset has been tampered with, either intentionally or accidentally.
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Our faces each have unique contours, bone, capillary and muscular construction, and physical characteristics and pigments that are specific to each one of us.
rank 91ftsg-tech-trends-2021-091
Powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems now automatically recognize animated characters.
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Just as each person has a unique set of face characteristics, our voices also contain various measurable characteristics that uniquely identify us.
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We rarely speak using standard, perfect language, and that poses a problem for voice recognition.
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Plenty of practical applications exist for automatic voice transcription: recording meeting minutes, taking lecture notes, generating transcriptions for podcasts and shows, and serving medical and pharmacological teams as they work with patients.
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With a large enough corpus of recorded speech, machine learning algorithms can be used to train a new voice model, often resulting in speech that’s indistinguishable from the original speaker.
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Alexa doesn’t just know who you are— she now knows how you’re feeling.
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Numerous academic studies have used Twitter and Facebook as sandboxes for computational personality-recognition experiments.
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In 2018, the U.S. Air Force applied for a patent that explains how wideband radar can be used to identify people by their bone structure.
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Emerging gesture recognition systems, or natural user interfaces (NUIs), will be an important future component of many different technologies.
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Machine learning has been deployed to recognize objects solely by touch.
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Sound continuously passes through space, even if we can’t hear it.
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We are continuously surrounded by radio waves, thanks to the millions of Wi- Fi routers around us.
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Instead of GPS coordinates, some offices and schools have deployed Bluetooth beacons and wireless access points to track people as they move.
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Computational photography is the convergence of computer vision, computer graphics, the internet, and photography.
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New fabrics and compounds help people fool recognition algorithms and, somewhat paradoxically, help them be seen more clearly.
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Real-world conversation is full of nuance: We use words and emphasis in unique ways, we talk over each other, and sometimes we need others to help us express what we’re thinking.
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Affective computing is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, neurobiology, and cognitive science, and it intersects directly with AI.
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Late in 2019, popular U.K. grocery store chain Waitrose partnered with the DNA discovery platform DnaNudge.
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China deployed facial recognition software to identify Uighurs in Western China.
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In New York, the Lockport City School District piloted its Aegis facial and object recognition system, built by SN Technologies, to quickly identify sex offenders.
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Last year, police falsely arrested a New Jersey man because of an incorrect facial recognition match.
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Quantifying and analyzing our biometric data can reveal patterns in our activities—and as a result, can reveal a lot about who we are, what we’re thinking, and what we will likely do next.
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There are roughly 4 million to 5 million genomic variants in an individual’s genome.
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In the wake of privacy concerns, some developers are building products that recognize and quantify us—but without revealing our individual identities.
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Hundreds of companies now score customers.
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AI-powered recognition tools have well-documented blind spots.
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The tech giants are building comprehensive systems intended to optimize our daily lives, and those scoring systems have appeal beyond their original use cases.
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Computers can make decisions faster than humans, but at what potential cost?
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There is no single set of standards nor a unified code of norms for scoring in the United States.
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New tools designed to enhance our digital experience instead track us without explicitly showing how or why.
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Data is being mined, refined, and productized in order to sort, tag, and catalog people.
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By now, you are likely familiar with China’s Social Credit System, a vast ranking system that this year will see a national rollout.
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A longstanding goal of China’s Social Credit System is to create what the Communist Party of China (CCP) calls a “fair, transparent, and predictable” business environment.
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In late 2019, the leak of highly classified government documents revealed an operations manual for detention camps in the far western region of Xinjiang, where scoring is used for predictive policing.
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Diminished reality (DR) is the field of AR that focuses on virtually masking, reducing, or suppressing features of one’s environment.
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Smart eyewear and head-mounted displays (HMDs) are already on the market; as the devices spread, generating more real-world data with which to update and fine-tune their hardware and operating systems, they are strongly positioned to replace smartphones as the primary personal device.
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From factory floors to virtual meeting rooms, AR has a broad range of business applications, fueling accelerated investment and growth in the field, while VR takes longer to mature.
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Holograms are light field recordings that, when reproduced, can appear as static or dynamic three-dimensional visuals.
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Holographic displays allow content creators to see their digital designs in physical space.
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360-degree video is created with a special camera rig designed to capture omnidirectional footage.
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A pivotal technology for developing XR experiences, volumetric video is the capture of a space, figure, or event in 3D.
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Just like volumetric video gives perspective and depth to visual content, spatial audio is broadcast in such a way that the listener interprets the sounds as occupying various spaces in their environment.
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The majority of AR and VR experiences available today require users to download an app to their device, but WebAR and WebVR are part of a burgeoning field in which AR and VR experiences are accessible directly through a browser.
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A term originally coined by Neal Stephenson in his iconic 1992 sci-fi novel “Snow Crash,” the metaverse refers to an all-encompassing shared virtual realm.
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The 2021 Super Bowl aired a commercial featuring a synthesized Vince Lombardi.
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Also known as “synthetic speech” or “textto-speech technology,” speech synthesis mimics real human voices and deploys them to various interfaces.
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Generative algorithms are creating synthetic voices that sound just like the original, and those voices can be modulated to the exact pitch and tone desired.
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Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) trained computers to not only recognize what’s in a video but to predict what humans will do next.
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A team at University of California, Berkeley, created software that can transfer the movements of one person in a video to someone in another video automatically using a generative adversarial network.
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Companies are now mapping the real world to generate synthetic digital twins.
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Frank is an artificial person from Samsung.
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In a new application of synthetic media, Israeli startup D-ID used its face recognition technology to generate live portraits from old photos.
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Synthetic media will give rise to an entirely new kind of celebrity in the 21st century: synthetic pop stars.
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What if you could interact with a simulated person to learn from them or practice management techniques?
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Synthesized media has a known problem area: It can be used by malicious actors to mislead people, to trick voice authentication systems, and to create forged audio recordings.
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Natalie Portman, Emma Watson, Taylor Swift, and Daisy Ridley—smart, talented artists—began “appearing” in adult videos in late 2018.
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The video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” was designed with brutal realism.
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In many countries it is illegal to plagiarize someone’s original content.
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We already got a taste of what our future synth media marketplaces will look like.
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In 2021, we expect to see synthetic media technologies further commercialized and made widely available.
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Powerful people frequently dismiss justified protest and credible accusations as “cancel culture” to evade consequences for their actions.
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Wearable devices will change everything we know about user interaction.
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In the internet’s first two decades, information crossed borders freely.
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The attention economy, which spawned listicles and tweet roundups, isn’t as easily measured as previously thought.
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Digital frailty is when digital assets are impermanent or easily compromised by technical glitches.
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Sensitive content warnings now appear regularly, as a way signaling that the information about to be conveyed may upset or aggravate certain readers, viewers, or listeners.
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Most people still find the majority of information they consume through search, and indexing new content types for wearable and spoken interfaces is proving challenging.
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On the fringes, news organizations are beginning to provide journalism as a service, rather than as traditional news products.
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Technology is lowering the barrier for creators to build a direct connection to their audience.
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Consolidation continues as media companies try to overcome shrinking margins on ad-supported media.
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The best journalism reveals hidden truths and keeps those in power accountable to the public.
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A proliferation of content competes for audiences’ time and money, opening new opportunities for media companies while also risking that the abundance of subscription options could overwhelm consumers’ willingness (or ability) to pay.
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The spread of misinformation will continue until platforms and news organizations adopt norms and standards for accountability and trust.
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The First Amendment shapes how platforms and publishers think about the design, development, and implications of content distribution.
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When the COVID-19 pandemic displaced office workforces around the world, managers and employees had to rethink how, where, and when they could carry out the responsibilities of their job.
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As employees became accustomed to working from their own living spaces over the past year, CISOs raised concerns that insecure and unmonitored home networks could expose the company’s proprietary data, trade secrets, video conversations and more to malicious hackers or industry rivals.
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With more and more of the developed world’s population customizing avatars in virtual realms, and with the fashion industry perpetually under fire for its pollutive practices, the market for digital fashion has a promising future.
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Once the preferred method of DIY designers and niche clothing brands, upcycling and circular, sustainable fashion has matured to the point where it is being adopted at scale by fashion retailers worldwide.
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Digital makeup exists at the intersection of facial recognition, 3D mapping, and augmented reality.
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From neuroenhancers to sextech, the unique market for digital and high-tech vices is growing.
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Neuroenhancement devices aim to record brain waves and send feedback.
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As genome sequencing becomes more widely available and affordable, some biohackers are using DNA results to nutritionally manipulate their bodies.
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If you need to manage stress or focus, you might look to “nootropics,” cognitive enhancement drugs that promise to help keep you calm and attentive.
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Most body-machine interfaces, like Elon Musk’s Neurolink, aren’t ready for the general public yet, but that hasn’t stopped some people from experimenting.
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Consumers can get CBD in post-workout smoothies, hand lotions, and even morning coffee.
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Beverages is a growing vertical within the cannabis industry.
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The supply chain for cannabis is challenging, and due to federal regulation, the largest logistics companies—Amazon, Fedex, and UPS—cannot legally service vendors.
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With the industry heavily regulated, it can be difficult for dispensary companies with business units located in different states to keep track of compliance.
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Unlike traditional CRM or customer databases, marketers in the cannabis space have additional regulations to contend with.
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Banking is a big hurdle for dispensaries and their parent companies.
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In February 2021, lawmakers held a hearing to determine why the FDA failed to regulate vaping sooner.
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The video game industry prospered during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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As the eSports ecosystem grows, new academies are launching to recruit and train prospective professional players and coaches.
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Games pose a unique business challenge: when a company has no new console or blockbuster title, players hop over to other platforms.
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The most popular video games today have one thing in common: they never end.
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Elite athletes are using more and more sophisticated tech tools to improve training and performance.
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Connected toys collect and use data for interactive experiences.
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Parents, increasingly concerned that their children aren’t getting enough exercise, are looking to toys and games that nudge kids into more active lifestyles.
rank 196ftsg-tech-trends-2021-196
Connected toys and games require data to work properly, and privacy experts are concerned about how children’s data are being collected, used and safeguarded.
rank 197ftsg-tech-trends-2021-197
Digital products rely on habit-forming features for success, but a growing body of research highlights the negative impacts that those sticky features can have on mental health and well-being.
rank 198ftsg-tech-trends-2021-198
Advancements in diagnostic testing and remote monitoring, supported by cloud computing, machine learning, and lowcost technology, are upending traditional doctor visits.
rank 199ftsg-tech-trends-2021-199
The everyday equipment in your bathroom will soon be used to collect biological samples for daily monitoring and testing.
rank 200ftsg-tech-trends-2021-200
In the wake of COVID-19, schools, offices, and even homeowners began using biometric scanning systems to determine whether someone is sick—and to grant or deny them entry.
rank 202ftsg-tech-trends-2021-202
Health care is the next battleground for big tech companies.
rank 203ftsg-tech-trends-2021-203
rank 204ftsg-tech-trends-2021-204
Health is the state of wellness—it’s the opposite of sickness.
rank 205ftsg-tech-trends-2021-205
Concierge care services have gone high tech.
rank 206ftsg-tech-trends-2021-206
Last year was a sudden dress rehearsal for widespread remote patient monitoring (RPM).
rank 207ftsg-tech-trends-2021-207
When it comes to digital transformation, health care has lagged behind most every major industry, including retail, banking, consumer packaged goods, and even government.
rank 208ftsg-tech-trends-2021-208
Patients are creating a trove of data that could contribute to their health care provider’s overall health assessment.
rank 209ftsg-tech-trends-2021-209
Dictating patient notes is a core task in a clinical practice.
rank 210ftsg-tech-trends-2021-210
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people went in search of highquality masks that would prevent viral transmission and also collect air quality data.
rank 211ftsg-tech-trends-2021-211
Most cognitive training programs are nothing more than clever memory games, but a new crop of technologies promises to optimize neural function.
rank 212ftsg-tech-trends-2021-212
Metabolism can be monitored using breath, and new devices use machine learning to determine the body’s metabolic rate in real time.
rank 213ftsg-tech-trends-2021-213
While we often hear research about the addictive nature of video games, certain types of games can have beneficial therapeutic effects.
rank 214ftsg-tech-trends-2021-214
The last few years saw the rise of smart fitness equipment including mirrors, bikes, and treadmills.
rank 215ftsg-tech-trends-2021-215
Consumers can currently choose among more than 1,000 wearable devices, including watches, earbuds, adhesive and pocket-size sensors, headbands, fabrics, and others.
rank 217ftsg-tech-trends-2021-217
rank 218ftsg-tech-trends-2021-218
The BioButton is an FDA-cleared, medical-grade wearable designed to be worn all the time.
rank 219ftsg-tech-trends-2021-219
Wireless body area networks (WBANs) communicate information from your wearable devices back to medical servers, app manufacturers, and your home computer.
rank 220ftsg-tech-trends-2021-220
By serving as replacements for human limbs, exoskeletons and soft exosuits help enhance human mobility for the differently abled or for patients recovering from traumatic injuries.
rank 221ftsg-tech-trends-2021-221
You’ve seen them in movies like “Iron Man,” “Dave,” and “Avatar”: powered suits that give average workers superhuman abilities.
rank 222ftsg-tech-trends-2021-222
In Japan and China, workers who must wear protective suits during the intense summer heat for years have worn tiny wearable fans to circulate generated air within their suits, while ventilation flaps allow the warm body heat to escape.
rank 223ftsg-tech-trends-2021-223
Considering how much behavioral, biometric, and ambient data it could potentially capture, our clothing has untapped potential as a sensory interface.
rank 224ftsg-tech-trends-2021-224
rank 225ftsg-tech-trends-2021-225
rank 226ftsg-tech-trends-2021-226
Amazon’s Halo smart wristband made headlines when it launched last year.
rank 228ftsg-tech-trends-2021-228
In-ear computers, otherwise known as earables, are here.
rank 229ftsg-tech-trends-2021-229
Virtual reality is commonly experienced through wearable headsets, the next generation of which will collect your biometric data and other personal information in order to provide added functionality.
rank 230ftsg-tech-trends-2021-230
The world’s largest technology companies—Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook—are all working, in some way, on connected devices that you wear over your eyes.
rank 231ftsg-tech-trends-2021-231
Nike’s self-lacing Electric Adaptable Reaction Lacing shoes adjust to the contours of your feet.
rank 232ftsg-tech-trends-2021-232
In Kenya, a researcher invented smart gloves that can translate sign language into speech.
rank 233ftsg-tech-trends-2021-233
rank 234ftsg-tech-trends-2021-234
Imagine wearing a temporary tattoo rather than taking a handful of pills every day.
rank 235ftsg-tech-trends-2021-235
For many people, implanted electronics are required to live a healthy life, but receiving the implants can require costly surgery, and devices sometimes need maintenance and replacement parts.
rank 236ftsg-tech-trends-2021-236
rank 237ftsg-tech-trends-2021-237
“Smart thread” uses electrical currents to transmit information to doctors following surgeries.
rank 238ftsg-tech-trends-2021-238
Nearly a decade ago, Microsoft experimented with “skinput,” which turned a person’s arm and hand into an interactive interface.
rank 239ftsg-tech-trends-2021-239
Computer scientist Jacques J. Vidal was the first to talk about “brain machine interfaces” in the early 1970s, and since then the term has grown to encapsulate a range of technologies that serve as interfaces between the brain and the outside world.
rank 240ftsg-tech-trends-2021-240
Despite the proliferation of smart home devices, only a few platforms can connect them all together.
rank 241ftsg-tech-trends-2021-241
Service robots automatically perform repetitive tasks around the home.
rank 242ftsg-tech-trends-2021-242
The pandemic resulted in an explosion of COVID-19 tech: devices and gadgets intended to help people mitigate the harms of the virus.
rank 243ftsg-tech-trends-2021-243
Collectively, our homes are starting to produce digital emissions.
rank 244ftsg-tech-trends-2021-244
As smart home devices become more ubiquitous and affordable, people are working to retrofit old homes with new technologies.
rank 245ftsg-tech-trends-2021-245
Appliance manufacturers build products with intentionally limited lifespans, forcing consumers to throw away old products and continually buy new ones.
rank 246ftsg-tech-trends-2021-246
For the past decade, researchers have been working on networked systems and device handoff protocols designed for the kitchen, creating opportunities for smart appliances and other devices to communicate with one another and work together to streamline efficiencies across the entire network, potentially saving users time, money, and energy.
rank 247ftsg-tech-trends-2021-247
The latest smart fitness devices bring the best of the gym right into your home.
rank 248ftsg-tech-trends-2021-248
U.S. cities are embracing “curb management” tech as e-commerce, food delivery, and rideshare services crowd building-front spaces.
rank 249ftsg-tech-trends-2021-249
The Home of Things includes routers, security cameras, thermostats, smart TVs, media devices (such as Bluetooth speakers), and myriad other smart devices.
rank 250ftsg-tech-trends-2021-250
A mesh network is a group of devices in close proximity to one another that allows for fast and efficient data routing.
rank 251ftsg-tech-trends-2021-251
Rollable screens are flexible and adaptable, and they unroll to become larger.
rank 252ftsg-tech-trends-2021-252
U.S. antitrust laws ensure and promote fair competition between companies for the benefit of consumers.
rank 253ftsg-tech-trends-2021-253
State governments are taking action on their own, filing antitrust lawsuits against the tech giants.
rank 254ftsg-tech-trends-2021-254
A handful of companies control the cloud and have the sole ability to set pricing, access, and standards.
rank 255ftsg-tech-trends-2021-255
Digital technology was supposed to increase opportunity and create open access to information.
rank 256ftsg-tech-trends-2021-256
As the federal government stalls on delivering meaningful data privacy protections, state governments are taking action.
rank 257ftsg-tech-trends-2021-257
Who exactly owns the rights to consumer data?
rank 258ftsg-tech-trends-2021-258
Tech platforms connecting the cloud, our smart homes, and our everyday digital activities aren’t interoperable.
rank 259ftsg-tech-trends-2021-259
The Biden administration is elevating famed scientists to key positions in the federal government, signaling a return to evidence-based research and forward-leaning policymaking.
rank 260ftsg-tech-trends-2021-260
When a company denies one or more users, businesses, or governments the ability to access its platform or services, this is an example of what the Future Today Institute calls a CDoS, a corporate denial-of-service.
rank 261ftsg-tech-trends-2021-261
Big tech companies are standing up departments dedicated to geopolitics.
rank 262ftsg-tech-trends-2021-262
In the digital age, a nation’s technology capabilities are inextricably linked to its economic prosperity, national security, and social stability.
rank 263ftsg-tech-trends-2021-263
The founding promise of the digital world was broad connectivity where information could flow freely.
rank 264ftsg-tech-trends-2021-264
While options for effective COVID-19 vaccines emerged by late 2020, capacity met only a fraction of the global demand.
rank 265ftsg-tech-trends-2021-265
Different countries began requiring proof of a COVID-19 vaccine at borders in 2021.
rank 266ftsg-tech-trends-2021-266
Cities are using digital twins of themselves to model the interplay of real-world infrastructure, topography, movement, and population.
rank 267ftsg-tech-trends-2021-267
U.S. states are developing charters and special permissions to stimulate blockchain use for digital identification, cryptocurrencies, and managing digital assets.
rank 268ftsg-tech-trends-2021-268
States are developing local laws for facial recognition technology and its use in law enforcement.
rank 269ftsg-tech-trends-2021-269
Throughout history, multilateral efforts have resulted in nations working together to promote shared purposes.
rank 270ftsg-tech-trends-2021-270
A digital dividend would give citizens a cut of the profits derived from their personal data.
rank 271ftsg-tech-trends-2021-271
Parts of the federal government rely on comically old technology, which is very difficult to maintain.
rank 272ftsg-tech-trends-2021-272
Cybersovereignty refers to a government exerting control over how the internet is run, who gets access to it, and what can be done with all of the data generated.
rank 273ftsg-tech-trends-2021-273
Nearly every website and mobile app contains some form of invisible tracking code that collects user data in order to build rich profiles for advertising.
rank 274ftsg-tech-trends-2021-274
Consumers are increasingly aware that their data are being scraped and used, and they are starting to demand transparency.
rank 275ftsg-tech-trends-2021-275
Crowdsleuthing is the practice of internet users banding together, typically unbidden, in an attempt to solve mysteries and crimes (and occasionally take justice into their own hands).
rank 276ftsg-tech-trends-2021-276
A data retention policy is a formalized protocol for retaining information, and historically companies have enacted them for compliance.
rank 278ftsg-tech-trends-2021-278
The historical tension between security and privacy will unleash new challenges in the near future.
rank 279ftsg-tech-trends-2021-279
Drones come in all shapes and sizes, and they can be used in a variety of settings for surveillance.
rank 280ftsg-tech-trends-2021-280
The Wi-Fi transmitter in your home or office is continually sending and receiving information, which it converts into radio waves.
rank 281ftsg-tech-trends-2021-281
Governments must track the spread of COVID-19 and its mutations, and that has led to a new purpose for mobile surveillance applications.
rank 282ftsg-tech-trends-2021-282
When laws like GDPR came into effect, the focus was on fines and enforcement.
rank 283ftsg-tech-trends-2021-283
Who, exactly, owns our data is a topic of great concern worldwide.
rank 284ftsg-tech-trends-2021-284
employees started an anti-surveillance petition in 2020 with a singular message: “Stop spying on us.”
rank 285ftsg-tech-trends-2021-285
rank 286ftsg-tech-trends-2021-286
Open source genealogy website GEDmatch allows users to voluntarily share their genetic profiles for free, as a way to find relatives and trace their genealogies.
rank 287ftsg-tech-trends-2021-287
3D cameras that have good depth of field—which were originally intended for content creation—are being repurposed as surveillance systems. 3D cameras alongside LiDAR can generate rich images, wireframes, and more.
rank 288ftsg-tech-trends-2021-288
Companies such as Tesla and Audi now rely more on electronic keys for vehicle entry.
rank 289ftsg-tech-trends-2021-289
A number of public departments sell personal data in the U.S. In 2019, California’s DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) reportedly earned $51 million.
rank 290ftsg-tech-trends-2021-290
Should consumers be given the right to eavesdrop on what their own devices are saying, and who else is listening in?
rank 292ftsg-tech-trends-2021-292
Whether they’re using a connected fitness device, a smart earphone, or a pair of smart glasses, consumers will find themselves continuously monitoring— and being monitored—by third parties.
rank 293ftsg-tech-trends-2021-293
Differential privacy as a mathematical concept has been around since 2006, when Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim, and Adam Smith first developed this new approach, also known as “epsilon indistinguishability.”
rank 294ftsg-tech-trends-2021-294
The #MeToo movement brought to light thousands of stories of sexual harassment and resulted in the ousting of more than a dozen high-profile men throughout 2018 and 2019.
rank 295ftsg-tech-trends-2021-295
Many social movements worldwide encourage the leaking of sensitive information to the press, to hackers, and to other governments.
rank 296ftsg-tech-trends-2021-296
rank 297ftsg-tech-trends-2021-297
With the global COVID-19 pandemic forcing fast coordination by government agencies, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies, vaccine data became a new target for cyberattacks.
rank 298ftsg-tech-trends-2021-298
Kaspersky researchers found that in the third quarter of 2019 alone, about 33% of the systems that use and store biometric data were targets of malware attacks.
rank 299ftsg-tech-trends-2021-299
As more consumers send their saliva away for genetic testing, the need for secure DNA databases has never been as important.
rank 300ftsg-tech-trends-2021-300
The first-known death resulting from a cyberattack happened in 2020.
rank 301ftsg-tech-trends-2021-301
Cybersecurity has its own supply chain, which includes IT services, vendors, software, networks, and data.
rank 302ftsg-tech-trends-2021-302
For the past few years, some social media users left big platforms for nascent startups that were established quickly and with little technical oversight.
rank 303ftsg-tech-trends-2021-303
A zero-day vulnerability is a flaw—a problem within a hardware or software system that developers didn’t discover during the testing process.
rank 304ftsg-tech-trends-2021-304
With all the hacking scandals that have plagued us in the past several years, we will see a transition to something called zero-knowledge proofs, which allow one party to verify data without conveying any additional information.
rank 305ftsg-tech-trends-2021-305
While they sound malicious, backdoors aren’t necessarily bad.
rank 306ftsg-tech-trends-2021-306
As our technology becomes more immersive, we’ll have increased needs for remote kill switches.
rank 307ftsg-tech-trends-2021-307
Older malware is being remixed and used for new purposes.
rank 308ftsg-tech-trends-2021-308
With the proliferation of smart devices— connected speakers, mirrors, and fitness gadgets—and millions of people working from home, hackers have a wellspring of new targets in 2021.
rank 309ftsg-tech-trends-2021-309
Machine learning is being used to recognize and regenerate sounds, including the sound of someone inserting a key into a lock.
rank 310ftsg-tech-trends-2021-310
Rather than malicious actors simply stealing data, you can expect to see new kinds of attacks in 2021 involving hackers accessing and then manipulating data for long-term damage.
rank 311ftsg-tech-trends-2021-311
New forms of insurance, intended to help businesses protect against hackers, will begin to enter the marketplace.
rank 312ftsg-tech-trends-2021-312
Thanks to advancements in AI, one of the big trends in security is automated hacking—in short, software that’s built to out-hack the human hackers.
rank 313ftsg-tech-trends-2021-313
The protocols underpinning the web were written long before we had connected microwaves and billions of daily users.
rank 314ftsg-tech-trends-2021-314
A distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack happens when a hacker sends so many requests to a battalion of machines that the entire network goes down.
rank 315ftsg-tech-trends-2021-315
U.S. citizens must continually hand over their social security numbers for authentication.
rank 316ftsg-tech-trends-2021-316
Last year, ransomware devastated companies and even entire cities.
rank 317ftsg-tech-trends-2021-317
Hackers-turned-activists have had a busy few years, working for causes they believe in.
rank 318ftsg-tech-trends-2021-318
Glitches are problems that don’t have an immediate, obvious cause but nonetheless can create frustrating problems.
rank 319ftsg-tech-trends-2021-319
The SolarWinds breach gave new attention to unintentional vulnerabilities in code, especially with a booming market for malware that exploits vulnerabilities in open-source applications and software.
rank 320ftsg-tech-trends-2021-320
In late 2018, more than 50 countries signed an international agreement on cybersecurity principles.
rank 321ftsg-tech-trends-2021-321
Many people confuse the deep web— hidden parts of the internet that aren’t usually indexed by search engines—with darknets, which are niche spaces promising anonymity, often for illegal activities.
rank 322ftsg-tech-trends-2021-322
White hat (read: good hacker) bug bounty programs are becoming popular.
rank 323ftsg-tech-trends-2021-323
It’s odd to think that in 2021 the world still relies on magnetic tape—those clunky old cartridges used decades ago to store data.
rank 324ftsg-tech-trends-2021-324
rank 325ftsg-tech-trends-2021-325
Every year, cybercriminals target critical infrastructure and facilities, and for years, security experts have warned that hackers could potentially disable dams, power plants, and traffic lights with these attacks.
rank 326ftsg-tech-trends-2021-326
Rather than simply pursuing cyber deterrence, governments are more actively engaging offensive positions in cyberwarfare.
rank 327ftsg-tech-trends-2021-327
Central banks are issuing and regulating blockchain-backed tokens called digital state currencies—or central bank digital currencies or CBDCs—which could modernize some of the most antiquated areas of global finance.
rank 328ftsg-tech-trends-2021-328
Stablecoins work to minimize the volatility of the price of a crypto-currency, by “pegging” them to a specific exchange rate for a currency, crypto-currency, fiat money, or an exchange-traded commodity.
rank 329ftsg-tech-trends-2021-329
Tech companies are leveraging APIs and digital infrastructure to provide seamless, interconnected financial services.
rank 330ftsg-tech-trends-2021-330
Blockchains can be used as a universal index of content authorship and edits.
rank 331ftsg-tech-trends-2021-331
Banks and insurance companies are using artificial intelligence to automate credit risk modeling.
rank 332ftsg-tech-trends-2021-332
Crypto-currency developers have created software to decentralize the exchange process, allowing individuals to trade directly with one another, without relying on a centralized third party to determine prices and settle the trades.
rank 333ftsg-tech-trends-2021-333
Web 3.0 allows for web browsers and mobile applications to perform more complex processes and enable entirely new kinds of transactions.
rank 334ftsg-tech-trends-2021-334
Blockchain networks like Ethereum offer new ways to track ownership, licensing, and royalties through smart contracts, or self-executing agreements in which the terms are directly written into lines of code.
rank 335ftsg-tech-trends-2021-335
Large computer problems can be broken down into smaller portions and solved using processing power of multiple standard computers, rather than with centralized supercomputers.
rank 336ftsg-tech-trends-2021-336
Fractional ownership, commonly associated with time-shares, allows unrelated parties to divide costs and risks in order to collectively own an asset.
rank 337ftsg-tech-trends-2021-337
Some corporations now “sponsor” developers so that they can dedicate their time to development, and new mechanisms are emerging to enable sustainable digital infrastructure.
rank 338ftsg-tech-trends-2021-338
Blockchains enable digital tokens that are provably unique and scarce.
rank 339ftsg-tech-trends-2021-339
There’s a geopolitical fight underway, pitting the U.S. against China in a race to deploy the telecom equipment and systems required to build 5G networks.
rank 340ftsg-tech-trends-2021-340
6G will be the sixth generation of wide-area wireless technology, following the transition to 5G.
rank 341ftsg-tech-trends-2021-341
The amount of latency in mobile networks differs, based on how far a signal must travel, the number of routers it passes through, and a variety of other factors.
rank 342ftsg-tech-trends-2021-342
Within the next decade, there could be as many as 50 billion devices online generating enormous amounts of data.
rank 343ftsg-tech-trends-2021-343
With the proliferation of smart cameras and speakers, developers are building edge systems that can recognize natural language, people, pets, and objects.
rank 344ftsg-tech-trends-2021-344
Because data and applications now live in many places- individual devices, the cloud, local storage—a traditional, one-size-fitsall approach to monitoring won’t work.
rank 345ftsg-tech-trends-2021-345
AWS invested $29 billion in its edge computing project Snowcone.
rank 346ftsg-tech-trends-2021-346
The new streaming services—such as Apple TV+, Peacock, Disney+, HBO Max— are entering a crowded field dominated by Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and YouTube.
rank 347ftsg-tech-trends-2021-347
U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology will recommend new guidelines in 2021 to help organizations transition to new cryptography standards.
rank 348ftsg-tech-trends-2021-348
In October 2019, Google researchers published a paper in the journal Nature as well as a blog post on the company’s website explaining that they had achieved “quantum supremacy” for the first time.
rank 349ftsg-tech-trends-2021-349
The global quantum computing race is underway.
rank 350ftsg-tech-trends-2021-350
New kinds of processors are being designed to add on to existing equipment, to give classic computers a quantum boost.
rank 351ftsg-tech-trends-2021-351
Cloud robotics and automation is a field in which physical robots share data and code, and perform computations remotely via networks, rather than within their containers alone.
rank 352ftsg-tech-trends-2021-352
Collaborative robots— or cobots—work alongside humans or together with other machines.
rank 353ftsg-tech-trends-2021-353
Autonomous robot swarms are coordinated and distributed to perform complex tasks in a more efficient way than a single robot or non-networked group of robots could.
rank 354ftsg-tech-trends-2021-354
A new generation of robots can now selfassemble, merge, split, and repair themselves.
rank 355ftsg-tech-trends-2021-355
We will soon tell computer systems what tasks we need completed, and they will automatically fabricate new robots for the job.
rank 356ftsg-tech-trends-2021-356
Smart dust, also known as microelectromechanical systems or MEMS, represents a new way of atomic-level materials engineering.
rank 358ftsg-tech-trends-2021-358
Quadrupedal robots have four articulated legs and can move around difficult terrain, making them useful tools for inspections and security applications.
rank 359ftsg-tech-trends-2021-359
NASA is working on Mars Dog, a fourlegged robot for exploring the red planet.
rank 360ftsg-tech-trends-2021-360
Robots could bring an end to forced labor and lead a new era of ethical manufacturing.
rank 361ftsg-tech-trends-2021-361
Some believe that we have moral obligations to our machines, and that robots should have rights.
rank 362ftsg-tech-trends-2021-362
During the pandemic, robots became essential workers.
rank 363ftsg-tech-trends-2021-363
The industrial internet of things ( IIoT) refers to all of the hardware that’s collecting, sharing, and using data within industrial settings.
rank 364ftsg-tech-trends-2021-364
Mobile automation in the supply chain is a quickly maturing market.
rank 365ftsg-tech-trends-2021-365
Pressure from investors, customers, and governments—in addition to extreme weather events and trade tensions— demands new efforts to build sustainable supply chains.
rank 366ftsg-tech-trends-2021-366
Cold chains are temperaturecontrolled supply chains—critical for goods such as medications, produce, and frozen foods.
rank 367ftsg-tech-trends-2021-367
Additive manufacturing is a process by which materials are deposited layer by layer as objects are printed.
rank 368ftsg-tech-trends-2021-368
Drones have seen unprecedented market growth and rapid adoption across various industries, thanks to lower costs, easier manufacturing, and their effectiveness in a wide range of use cases.
rank 369ftsg-tech-trends-2021-369
Drone swarms, or fleets of networked drones capable of coordinated operations and communication, are being developed for military operations, surveillance, and other complex functions without human interaction.
rank 370ftsg-tech-trends-2021-370
Fleets of drones operating as air carriers will begin making package deliveries soon.
rank 371ftsg-tech-trends-2021-371
Car manufacturers, seeking to meet consumer preferences, are quickly adopting proactive safety functions that also provide the building blocks for full autonomous driving.
rank 372ftsg-tech-trends-2021-372
Autonomous delivery is becoming more common, driven in part by an increased desire for contactless interactions brought about by the pandemic.
rank 373ftsg-tech-trends-2021-373
The proliferation of drones will lead to more aviation guidelines, including “air lanes” that will guide low-flying aircraft, both piloted and autonomous.
rank 374ftsg-tech-trends-2021-374
Compact, unmanned electric aircraft have moved beyond the concept stage, and now a flurry of prototype tests at companies worldwide could open the door for autonomous air travel services to take individuals and small groups short distances.
rank 375ftsg-tech-trends-2021-375
“Follow-me” functionality, whereby a drone is able to detect and pursue a moving subject, has burst onto the scene in personal drones for photography and videography, but it has potential applications in a range of settings and situations.
rank 376ftsg-tech-trends-2021-376
As natural disasters and extreme weather events become more common, drones will help with the rapid inspection and interpretation of critical infrastructure.
rank 377ftsg-tech-trends-2021-377
Vehicles are evolving into controlled mobile biospheres that allow people to move through the world and spend extended periods in their cars without subjecting themselves to the elements and contagions.
rank 379ftsg-tech-trends-2021-379
The rise of batterysupported transportation will change how we power vehicles, transforming an infrastructure that has historically sourced energy from gasoline to one that delivers it via the electrical grid.
rank 380ftsg-tech-trends-2021-380
The business models for transportation are shifting to subscription and payper-use structures, as bike, scooter, and car ride-sharing services become more common.
rank 382ftsg-tech-trends-2021-382
In an ideal world, keeping software updated ensures the safest and best experience possible.
rank 383ftsg-tech-trends-2021-383
The quality of any algorithm has a significant correlation with the size of the dataset on which it is trained.
rank 384ftsg-tech-trends-2021-384
New rules will govern how autonomous vehicles can be tested.
rank 385ftsg-tech-trends-2021-385
As more systems and infrastructure transition to digital formats, and more purely digital systems are built, fewer of these systems will rely on analog or manual fail-safes.
rank 386ftsg-tech-trends-2021-386
As the role of car ownership shifts in society, public roads will transform.
rank 387ftsg-tech-trends-2021-387
China’s ambition to dominate the global car industry is buoyed by its manufacturing sector, work in AI, and vast troves of driving data.
rank 388ftsg-tech-trends-2021-388
Autonomous vehicles, collaborative drones and robots, and AI are leading to changes in how cities are designed.
rank 389ftsg-tech-trends-2021-389
Hydrogen fuel cells could power commercial aviation.
rank 390ftsg-tech-trends-2021-390
Several companies are developing technology to bring back commercial supersonic jet travel.
rank 391ftsg-tech-trends-2021-391
Efforts are underway to create autonomous, AI-powered ships, and the legal framework is emerging for them to operate safely and officially in international waters.
rank 392ftsg-tech-trends-2021-392
The governments and companies that lead international infrastructure projects have powerful influence on setting regional, global, and geopolitical standards.
rank 393ftsg-tech-trends-2021-393
As more devices and vehicles rely on battery power, the race to produce a lighter, more efficient battery is more competitive than ever.
rank 394ftsg-tech-trends-2021-394
Fusion power plants could produce carbon-free electricity by harnessing the same nuclear process that powers the sun.
rank 395ftsg-tech-trends-2021-395
Hydrogen is abundant, ubiquitous, and a versatile energy carrier.
rank 396ftsg-tech-trends-2021-396
In many countries, government agencies and private companies distribute energy to citizens via an electric grid that’s made up of a sprawling network of generators and connectors.
rank 397ftsg-tech-trends-2021-397
In the coming years, an unprecedented number of charging stations for electric vehicles will come online, driving demand for a new kind of car and disrupting the supply chain and retail business of traditional gasoline.
rank 398ftsg-tech-trends-2021-398
Renewable energy is collected from sources that can be replenished on a reasonable timescale.
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In the near future, we will transport clean energy from production sites to destinations in need using a new kind of power grid now being tested in China.
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Zero-carbon natural gas is produced at plants that capture all carbon dioxide byproduct, neutralizing the carbon output of the process.
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Floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs) are a new kind of energy plant that can float and move with currents, while also withstanding harsh environmental conditions.
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We are in a new geological epoch defined by the permanent impact that humans have had on Earth: The “Anthropocene” (anthro for “man,” and cene for “new”).
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While citizens demand action on climate change, some world governments are now relaxing or eliminating rules and regulations designed to mitigate human-caused environmental damage.
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Green stimulus plans are government measures to stimulate the economy while promoting clean energy, responding to climate change, encouraging biodiversity, and protecting the environment.
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Direct air capture technology extracts carbon dioxide directly from ambient air rather than capturing it at sites where it is created, like factories and certain power plants.
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We’re getting better at understanding how ice sheets and sea levels change over time.
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An extreme weather event falls outside the statistical norms of typical fluctuations in weather patterns.
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There’s no official designation for “climate change refugees,” but there may be one soon, as climate change forces more people from their homes and communities, undermining the economic stability of those regions.
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We’re living through a strange contradiction: It may seem as if we’re in close contact with an ever-increasing number of wild animals and novel pathogens, but in reality our planet’s biodiversity has plummeted.
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Rewilding is an integrative approach to environmental conservation and rehabilitation that focuses on the reintroduction of keystone species and the creation of safe corridors by which species can freely migrate.
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Seasteading is a colonization process wherein permanent human dwellings and settlements are constructed at sea, outside the reaches of most governments.
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To counteract extreme weather and climate change, researchers are looking to green technologies to reduce our short- and longterm impacts on the environment.
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Scientists are building tubular bioreactors, filling them with green algae and letting them eat away at the carbon captured from the environment.
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Carbon dioxide captured from factories can be repurposed as building materials.
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In 2019, researchers at the University of Portsmouth accidentally discovered a plastic-eating enzyme that could help break down larger pieces of plastic and aid in recycling efforts.
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The notorious pile of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean is bigger than we thought.
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Oceanic iron fertilization involves dumping enormous amounts of iron sulfate into large swaths of the ocean.
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Some scientists are working on building enormous, mirrored parasols in the stratosphere, which would reflect sunlight back into space and theoretically cool the Earth’s atmosphere over time.
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This controversial technique, which has not yet been tried at scale, involves injecting tiny sulfur dioxide particles into the sky that would reflect sunlight back into space.
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Inspired by maritime observations, this geoengineering technique would try to re-create the long clouds left by ocean freighters passing through open water.
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CO2 is the undisputed culprit when it comes to climate change.
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Companies of all sizes are leading with sustainability as part of their core values.
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Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan sets targets for sourcing, supply chain, and production throughout its operations.
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Many elements of a supply chain that can hinder sustainability, including energy use, labor conditions, cold-chain carbon emissions, and contamination of local environments.
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It’s no mystery that the shipping industry is a huge contributor to climate change due to its carbon dioxide emissions and unquenchable thirst for fuel.
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Vast amounts of precious rare-earth elements and metals—which are used in much of today’s technology hardware—exist on the moon and in meteors and asteroids.
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Space junk is becoming a bigger problem as more satellites are launched into the atmosphere.
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In 2019, scientists did what they thought was impossible: They captured an image of a black hole’s silhouette using the Event Horizon Telescope.
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Within a few years, there will be vast megaconstellations of tiny satellites orbiting the Earth.
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Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory are working on a concept that could not only help steer satellites back down to Earth when they’re decommissioned but also clean up space clutter in the process.
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Amazon, SpaceX, Google, and others are developing satellite technology that would beam internet services directly to our devices, and in the process bypass our internet service providers (ISPs).
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New spacecraft, rockets, and other technologies are helping private commercial companies achieve liftoff—with plenty of eager investors footing the bill.
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As of 2020, SpaceX became the only NA- SA-certified company to send people into orbit.
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New technologies have spawned a new trend in space transportation: galactic ridesharing.
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Some satellites require fuel, and it turns out fuel is very heavy.
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NASA has said it wants to send humans to Mars by 2030, and in 2016 it selected six private U.S. companies, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Bigelow Aerospace, to develop prototypes for deep space habitats.
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New rocket propulsion systems for rocket engines would use mercury as a fuel, which could run the risk of spreading toxic chemicals through Earth’s atmosphere.
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The U.S. announced the launch of a new Space Force in 2019.
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If climate change escalates and we are unable to mitigate its effects, humanity is going to need a plan B. Some scientists think our next best option is a 1,000-year space mission to save future generations from extinction.
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Synthetic biology is a relatively new interdisciplinary field of science that combines engineering, design, and computer science with biology.
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CRISPR, which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, allows scientists to edit precise positions on DNA using a bacterial enzyme.
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As genetic material that contains instructions for making proteins, messenger RNA is revolutionizing vaccine development.
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Researchers are developing a new technique that might someday enable people to upgrade their children before birth.
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Miniature snippets of the nervous system are being used to create miniature blobs of brain tissue.
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Lab-grown lung and brain tissues are being used to research the lasting effects of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
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Scientists now use synthetic biology to discover and produce molecules on demand.
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In 2018, scientists from Microsoft Research and the University of Washington achieved a new milestone: They discovered how to create random access memory on DNA at scale.
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This year, millions of genetically engineered mosquitoes will be released in the Florida Keys.
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Last year, scientists created the first genetically modified squid using CRISPR.
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Researchers have already developed artificial cells that come very close to the real thing.
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Molecular robotics will someday be used on all life forms to provide targeted therapies as well as genetic augmentation.
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Early in the global pandemic, a team at the University of Bern published the code for a synthetic SARS-CoV-2 virus.
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Biohacking is a socio-technological movement bringing together citizen scientists, academic researchers, technologists, data scientists, and others interested in life sciences.
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The first human genome cost roughly $2.7 billion and took 13 years to complete.
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New genetic screening techniques that test embryos before implantation are making their way into fertility centers.
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Researchers at the University of Tartu, Estonia, use neural networks to develop novel segments on human genomes.
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Less than 2% of people who have had their genomes sequenced are from Africa.
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Sometimes the gene editing process results in breaking the double strands of a DNA’s helix.
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A new gene-editing technique, which scientists call “prime editing,” could make the process much more precise and result in more accurate modifications.
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The source code for humanity is stored in our DNA.
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Months before the pandemic, researchers at Johns Hopkins University ran a simulation of a hypothetical, treatment-resistant coronavirus outbreak spawned at a Brazillian pig farm.
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The Human Genome Project-read (HGP-read)—an initiative to sequence the human genome and improve the technology and costs associated with sequencing DNA—wrapped up in 2004.
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One of the fastest-growing datasets in the world comprises human genetic data.
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In 2015, Chinese researchers edited the genes of a human embryo.
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In 2019, a major outbreak of swine fever devastated China’s stock and killed nearly a quarter of the global pig population.
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Sinogene, a Beijing-based commercial pet cloning company, sequenced, cloned, and delivered a cat named Garlic for a 22-year-old businessman.
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In 2017, researchers plunged into the waters off Lizard Island on the northeastern coast of Australia with some unexpected equipment in tow—a set of underwater loudspeakers.
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Synthetic biology is an emerging field that builds new life: replacement organs and soft tissue, as well as entirely new kinds of organisms never before seen on Earth.
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A mass extinction event is happening right now in our guts and in the environment.
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Researchers are building the first-ever comprehensive map of all 37.2 trillion human cells in the body.
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In the 20th century, biologists focused on taking things apart—things such as tissues, cells, and proteins—to learn how they function.
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By 2050, we must increase agriculture production by 70% to meet projected global demand for food.
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Precision agriculture promises to increase crop yields and profitability, while reducing the costs of watering, fertilizing, and treating crops for pests.
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Agricultural companies, farmers, and food manufacturers could benefit from deep learning for food recognition.
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Microsoft launched FarmBeats, a sort of Internet of Things for farms, on its Azure marketplace.
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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and SoftBank’s CEO Masayoshi Son (until April 2021) have both invested in vertical farming, a burgeoning industry in which crops are grown in stacked layers inside of climate-controlled environments.
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Many countries lack the land mass or infrastructure to grow high-quality produce, so they’re bringing traditional agriculture indoors and underground, using high-tech robotics, irrigation, and lighting systems to cultivate food.
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The gene-editing tool CRISPR promises to enhance the nutritional value of produce, increase crop yields, and extend freshness.
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The cost of lab-grown meat still remains expensive.
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Smart packaging will drive agricultural advances and investment.
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Carbon dioxide is the undisputed culprit when it comes to climate change.
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Terraforming—literally, “earth shaping”—is a concept from science fiction in which people re-form another planet to resemble Earth and support human life.
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Artificial intelligence represents the third era of computing, generally defined as the ability for a machine to perform cognitive functions as well as or better than humans.
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For our automated systems to work, they need both our data and a framework for making decisions.
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Synthetic media consists of algorithmically generated digital content, including audio, video, deepfakes, virtual characters and environments, and more.
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From a security standpoint, 2020 was the worst year on record.
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5G is the fifth generation mobile network and a global wireless standard.
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Edge computing performs computations near or at the source of data.
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Quantum computing uses the properties of quantum physics to store data and perform computations using specialized machines.
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Human ambition, our quest for knowledge, and our curiosity have always driven our rush to explore space, and 2021 promises to be another important year for space initiatives.
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