The most electrifying Recurrent Patterns of 2022
As another year slowly comes to a close, I’d like to thank you for another year of conversations and explorations into recurrent patterns.
January
2022 began with the end of an era: Blackberry ended support for its old BB10 platform or BlackBerry OS platform. Blackberry was a dominant force in the cellphone market — it owned half the market in America and 20% of the market overseas.
Its rise to the top was a combination of features — email, phone, web browsing — in one device. But Apple made sure it didn’t last forever. A number of bad decisions led to Apple taking over, like assuming users will prefer tangible buttons over a touchscreen and the lack of app building on the Blackberry tech system. This paved the way for Apple (and Android) developers to take over the app ecosystem and, in turn, the cell phone market.
Facebook also killed a new venture early in 2022 after shutting down Libra, its own cryptocurrency, and selling off the assets to save face with regulators. The social media network is attempting to create technology that provides value and assists people but hasn’t found the way to do so yet.
February
Tech is meant to make your life easier. With voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, you’d think they’d do the same, but those same assistants leave your devices open to being hacked. How? Psychoacoustic Hiding, which essentially is when you take a regular sound and combine it with a 'noise' recognized by a computer as a command.
Although chances of you being hacked are slim, with 200 million smart speakers and assistants in the world, it’s important to be aware of your privacy and security.
Also, Walmart reminded us all that they are much more than a superstore — they are a global logistical behemoth. Walmart is currently using blockchain technology to solve issues in their supply chain.
March
In March, we discussed the truth. Maybe something more important than truth are the facts and their sources. In a “Fake News” society, how can we determine what’s factual and what’s not? Well, the blockchain can help with tedious fact checking and transparency.
Technology is always best when it's helping people for good. In particular, technology that isn’t just helping us diagnose problems but fix them, like helping those suffering from vision impairment. An example of that technology is the Phoenix 99 Bionic Eye, a research project out of the University of Sydney. It can bypass faulty retina cells and promote those that still work to send electric signals to the brain. Seeing really is believing.
April
In April, I felt the world was suffering from a lack of innovation. Although advancements are happening, how technology is being used isn’t as thought out.
For instance, when people get sick, their first reaction isn’t to go to the hospital. It’s to use Google. There are 420 million searches for health-related queries on Google a day, which makes me wonder whether the advice — typically optimized for higher visibility — is good or bad, especially when health is a big business and Google has advertising dollars to depend on.
Also, Google might be free, but at what cost? Their analytics software tracks the search term that brought you to a specific site, how many pages were visited, and the like. It’s helpful, but as Google upgrades their systems they force businesses to do the same. And that can mean they lose past knowledge forever. It’s a little bit like a new Dark Age.
May
Knowing what we know about Elon Musk and Twitter, I had thoughts on how he can make it successful by ushering in a new era of eCommerce.
Bitcoin has been a topic of discussion for years, and has been used for various forms of illegal activities. I even followed a nefarious bitcoin lead. Any sort of transaction is on the blockchain forever but now, more than ever, the network for storing and trading digital currencies and assets is becoming more transparent. Is it a betrayal of the promise of anonymity, privacy and decentralization? Time will tell.
June
Since I am such a giving person, I’ll remind you that in June I taught you how to make millions by using AI. All it requires is a topic, AI software like OpenAI to write the content. Then add your own flair and publish it everywhere. There are accounts that do just that with 1.83 million subscribers (and advertising deals).
Another tech death in 2022 was the demise of Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer. What once was on every Windows operating system — subjecting users to spyware, adware and viruses just by simply visiting a webpage — is now gone, leaving us with Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari and Firefox.
July
We all celebrated a birthday in July — our 15th, to be exact. The iPhone turned 15. As previously mentioned, this eventually was the demise of the traditional cell phone and fellow smartphones like Blackberry.
Even now, Apple is still finding ways to innovate their product and keep users on their toes. The Apple M chip series is a hint of what to expect: it contains a neural network hardware and an image signal processor. Your phone will better understand you, your surroundings and habits.
Like a recurrent pattern mentioned above, health is big business. Amazon wants a slice of the pie, too, with Prime Health. They are closing in on a deal to purchase One Medical for almost $4 billion, Amazon Prime wants to disrupt the healthcare system. With One Medical, which is a membership-based primary care practice, they can offer clients virtual care through an app that aims to help provide technology-powered, human-centered care — in person or 24/7 from anywhere. At this point, what can’t Amazon do?
August
After writing about making money using AI in June, I launched Know It All. Using Amazon’s cloud service Polly, podcast services from Spotify, imagery from Unsplash, I assembled my own media empire. Although it’s not perfect, it proves that technology can be used easily in an inexpensive way to enrich our lives.
Something that isn’t enriching our lives? Passwords. I wrote about LastPass’ security incident, but it wasn’t really about LastPass. It’s about the fact that we are still using outdated systems to protect our security against attacks. If a website devoted to protecting passwords can face a security threat, we’re all at risk.
It’s time to move on from passwords and continue to develop technology that makes systems secure and user friendly simultaneously.
September
The great self-driving car debate. It’s something I wrote about this year and lastand I’m sure it’ll be a topic of discussion in 2023. The investment in self-driving cars was the catalyst to many advancements in technology, like advanced chips that provide video, image recognition, and neural networks.
What is lost in the current self-driving car discussion is that it’s clear no one company can do it themselves. It’s a tech problem that needs to be solved collectively — or more cases like this will occur.
Do you feel like you’re being watched? Are you concerned that your phone is listening to you? Well, there is a chance Google might make that eerie feeling grow with the concept of smart advertising.
I wrote about Google getting into the digital billboard business and, despite their claims these ads won’t be highly targeted, I am skeptical. Google knows where you are, your search history, your likes and dislikes, and so much more. Now they can redirect you, using their own Google Maps system, right by billboards which will show you ads. WIll these ads be eerily relevant to your tastes? We’ll see.
October
To say Twitter has had a year would be an understatement. CEO drama aside, Twitter unveiled the highly requested (and equally debatable) edit feature for its Twitter Blue users.
That same week, Japanese scientists attached a computer powered by a solar cell to a cockroach. Why? To send signals to the cockroach to turn left or right. This opens up the possibility for sensors or cameras to be attached on the backs of cockroaches, giving people access to dangerous places.
Guess which technology advancement was more exciting to me? (It wasn’t the so-called innovative Twitter feature.)
Some are claiming that smart contracts are going to replace lawyers. If it sounds crazy, it’s because it is. I wrote about how even with tech advancements, human affairs are tricky and attempting to make them black and white doesn’t always work seamlessly. There are some things tech can’t replace.
November
In November, I made the case for suing people rather than AI. Although the capabilities of AI are growing, there isn’t exactly clear ownership of AI when it does something wrong — despite being programmed by humans to do a specific job.
Similarly, I wrote about expecting too much from computers and technology’s potential. The expectations of voice assistants was that they’d talk back — but what developers delivered was not entirely useful.
Like self-driving cars, voice assistants can only do what their programmers teach them to do.
December
A recurrent pattern in this round-up is Twitter. Earlier this month I wrote about Elon Musk’s fight with Apple’s Tim Cook. Only the richest man in the world and the richest company in the world. Apple withdrew their ad spend from Twitter, resulting in Musk crawling to Cook’s office. Just last week Elon Musk announced he may leave Twitter as CEO (likely due to pressure from Tesla’s board of directors.) It’s a never ending saga and will likely continue to be a recurrent pattern throughout 2023.