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Technology

Technology trends 2020

Cyber ​​espionage has become the favorite technique of governments to obtain secrets from their adversaries. The US National Counterintelligence Office (NCIX) believes that China and Russia are currently the most active and aggressive cyber-spies. Two of the biggest hacks of recent years, Operation Cloud Hopper and the theft via malware to the NSA were attributed to elite hacker groups based in these countries, sponsored by their own governments.

Cyber ​​espionage is very attractive because of its scope, much greater than that of traditional espionage, since everything that exists in cyberspace can be a target; In addition, there are no physical barriers in this environment. The main weapon of cyber spying is malware or malicious software, such as Trojans, computer worms or rootkits . Using malware, cyber spying can remotely access other systems to steal confidential information or take control of them.

As malware may already come pre-installed in products, countries like the US are taking drastic measures against products of foreign origin. Lately, the US House of Representatives passed a bill to ban its government from buying Huawei telecommunications equipment , two US senators proposed a law to restrict the government from buying Chinese drones and the army banned its soldiers from using the Chinese app Tik Tok .

The cloud gaming will begin to be adopted among gamers

 

The digital revolution has profoundly transformed the video game industry, since gaming went from being a “niche” market to a mainstream one , to the degree that today is more lucrative than cinema, music or TV, or that in Mexico it is already considered a sport. His experience continues to be reinvented with new technologies, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and cloud gaming .

The gaming cloud or cloud gaming is an innovative way to use video games, mainly high-end , distributed via streaming and typically processed on remote servers, endowed with high processability. It can revolutionize gaming as Netflix revolutionized television. The gamers can play from any computer with good internet access and save the need to buy expensive consoles to run their games, since all processing is done in the cloud.

Technology giants such as Google and Microsoft took the lead in this new market by releasing their own platforms, Google Stadia and Project xCloud (still in beta), respectively, last year. Facebook decided not to be left behind and recently bought the Spanish startup PlayGiga. Finally, there are rumors that Amazon, which already has a presence in the gaming industry with Twitch, is developing its own platform. Could it be that in a few years the cloud gaming moves from the “niche” market to the mainstream?

The satellite race warms up

In 2020 there would be a great expansion with the launch of up to 2,500 satellites, an explosion compared to the 452 functional objects taken into orbit in 2018. The role of SpaceX stands out, which will accelerate the passage of Starlink, a constellation of up to 30 thousand satellites that would seek to give the entire planet low latency internet SpaceX is already an important player, because after the launch of its satellite 180, it surpassed Planet Labs as the most active private company.

Every day we will see more satlets —let is used to refer to a much smaller size — that have the ability to assemble — plug-and-play philosophy — and that involve less risk, cost and construction time. The challenge for this year is to improve its energy efficiency, processing capacity and radiation tolerance.

The geopolitical situation influences the trend: NASA has had to change its way of working to be more agile and entrepreneurial, while China is finishing implementing the third phase of Beidou, a navigation system that will surpass the functions of GPSs.

Advances Digital Nationalism

The ‘global’ nature of the Internet is being attacked by different states, who sometimes make arguments of national competitiveness or security, but who ultimately seek to mark their territory within the network, giving it a nationalist character.

Digital nationalism will grow in plans such as legislation for data localization, censorship of business activity, taxation of technology companies, digital sovereignty laws and both national firewalls and blackouts.

Although these measures have mixed meanings, the result of these measures is making the Internet a more closed and fragmented place. The next degree of nationalism will soon be undertaken by China and Russia, who in 2020 will take important steps for what in the future could be the existence of at least two Internets. Among these actions will be the direction of the development of new Internet protocols and DNS systems, as well as connectivity infrastructure decisions within their countries.

The deepfakes will become a viral problem

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are developing at a dangerously accelerated pace. In 2014, Facebook developed the DeepFace algorithm to recognize human faces in photographs with an accuracy almost equal to that of the human eye. In 2016, Google created AlphaGo , an AI system capable of playing the complex game of Go and beating its world champion. A year later, the same AI technique behind DeepFace and AlphaGo was used to manipulate pornographic videos and replace the faces of their actors with those of celebrities .

These video montages – highly realistic – that use AI to distort reality, are known as deepfakes . The deepfakes are created by a class of algorithms for machine learning (machine learning) called deep learning , which emulates the operation of the human brain with artificial neural networks (ANN, in English). ANNs require training with large volumes of data: thousands of images of the same face are needed to generate deepfakes , so celebrities are easy targets.

One of the most popular deepfakes is that of the Saturday Night Live episode in which the face of actor Alec Baldwin is replaced with that of President Donald Trump. In another deepfake that went viral, the face of actor Jack Nicholson is replaced with that of Jim Carrey in a famous scene from the movie “The Shining.” This year will continue to viralize more deepfakes ; many in order to deceive the audiencas; For now, Facebook is taking action on the matter and recently announced that it will censor all deepfakes on its platform .

Data will transform the health industry

Digital Health has been long awaited and in 2020 we will see the maturation of innovative proposals towards a digital transformation of the industry. This will come due to the momentum around the data: there are key decisions about its standardization, interoperability, use, privacy and security, because here is the key to more personalized diagnostic services, virtual assistants and data-based decision making.

Regulators and international organizations noted that digital health requires consuming brutal amounts of data, which is why they promote regulations to improve collaboration between companies and protect users. The EU takes the lead with up to six types of regulations, among which one stands out to prevent the model based on the sharing-exploitation of user data.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft have a key role in voice recognition , thanks to Alexa, Assistant and Cortana, as companies will accelerate the placement of their voice assistants on thousands of devices; Their experience in software and hardware helps to massify the use of wearables and they will soon do so with technologies such as virtual reality for pain control.

Apple and Google will be essential to break data interoperability silos, also to expand the use of wellness apps and health coach . Likewise, the advances that Mayo Clinic will have for the creation of a scalable digital health center and the development with Google of standards for integration and advanced data analysis will be highlighted .

Finally, this year we will see more advances in the use of AI for diagnosis of diseases, in automation of administrative processes, in the use of telehealth for disease prevention and control, in the use of facial recognition to interpret human emotions and in the creation of digital twins for a doctor to model and determine the way in which a medical procedure or treatment can be more successful.

It will take off interest in DataOps in the business world

The world of IT has been transformed in recent years with the arrival of DevOps (development & operations) . This methodology promotes constant collaboration between software engineers and IT operations staff to expedite software delivery, improve its quality and accelerate bug fixes . Today, data analytics projects are becoming more relevant than those of traditional software and many of the DevOps practices also apply to analytics.

The DataOps is a novel methodology born from DevOps and establishes data management practices to expedite the delivery of analytical solutions and improve their quality. The practices proposed by the DataOps are related to data quality access and control, continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) of models and analysis, and collaboration between data scientists and IT operations engineers. The official DataOps manifesto details all its principles.

In a report of 451 Research , 86% of organizations surveyed said they planned to increase their investment in DataOps during 2019, a trend that will increase by 2020 , as organizations need to make decisions based on data to stay competitive and clearly the DataOps is It is becoming the cornerstone of data management in organizations.

Technology

How technology has changed human life in the last decade

The year 2020 leaves behind a decade of great changes in which technology has shaped our lives . Cities, transport vehicles, work related tools and especially our daily habits and routines have been transformed by the unstoppable development of technology.

The changes, which we have been assuming just without being aware, have made our lives not equal to those of 2010. And, today, technology evolves at such speed, that in a decade there are more drastic changes in the that occurred in the past in the same period of time.

People of legal age will have been able to clearly perceive the revolution to which their life has been subjected. A revolution in which we do not repair daily, but if we look back, it will surprise us. Here we compile some changes that our lives have experienced.

Calls to stay have gone down in history

With the development of mobile phones, mobile networks and especially the birth of WhatsApp, calls have been restricted only for important occasions . Nowadays, communication with our friends is practically continuous. To stay in a place and at a certain time, there is no need to call, because with a simple WhatsApp it is enough.

Less passionate reunions

Nowadays, people who live in opposite parts of the world can communicate via the internet daily. Before, calls between different countries were very expensive, so you could only maintain more sporadic contact. This made returning home much more intense and reunions used to be very passionate. Now, luckily, we can maintain continuous contact with our loved ones and feel closer to home even if we are thousands of kilometers away. Applications like WhattsApp or Skype, make the distances smaller.

The cameras

While it is true that photography enthusiasts still use photo cameras, many people only use a smartphone to make almost professional snapshots . And, if we know the technique and have a mobile with a sufficiently powerful integrated camera, we can achieve extraordinary results. The 2010 phones had a camera, but their capacity has little or nothing to do with the current ones.

At present, when virtually all the photos are digital and we see them through a screen, instant cameras have become fashionable , those that are capable of printing an image on photo paper in a few seconds.

Social networks

In the year 2020 we have acquired the habit of telling our day to day in full detail in the different social networks. There are many who use twitter to leave their opinions on countless topics or to inform themselves of their neighbor’s opinions. On Instagram, for example, the accounts that publish their day to day have great success: from the clothes they use, to the food they eat, through the exercises they do in the gym. All this has led to the emergence of a profession: the so-called ‘influencers’. But, on the other hand, social networks have hurt our privacy, since, almost without realizing it, we have given our personal data to companies, who know what we need, when we need it and how we want it.

Streaming platforms

Live streaming or ‘streaming’ allows users to play content without waiting to download it in order to consume it. Thus, in these spaces the Internet user can watch a video, a series or a movie at the same time that it is downloaded.

This has driven the rise and rise of platforms such as YouTube, Netflix or Spotify, among many others. Companies like Netflix have contributed to weakening Internet piracy and have influenced people to have ‘hooked’ on the series. For a small monthly price, these portals give you access to countless series and movies that you can enjoy on your mobile, tablet or television. Spotify did the same with the world of music . With a free and paid version without ads, this platform brings all the music on the planet to your hand.

Youtube has become since its came in 2005, when its creators posted the first video on the youtube, ‘Me at the zoo’, in a giant in which it is the users themselves who generate the content. Some of those crazy young people who hung their videos on this kind of social network in 2010, today have become true media stars , with millions of followers and Hollywood star contracts.

The way to do a job

Internet has also changed the way we do the work. There is no longer a need to stay in the library with our classmates to carry out group work. Now, several members of the group can work simultaneously on the same document each from home. In addition, in the network we can find an infinite amount of information, so turning to the physical encyclopedia is an almost forgotten activity.

Electric and autonomous vehicles and electric scooters

In the fight against pollution, society tries to mitigate damage to the planet by reducing polluting gases. This has meant that in some large cities the entry to polluting vehicles has been restricted. Simultaneously hybrid and electric cars are gaining ground and it is increasingly common to see them on our roads. However, possibly in the next decade when we see the biggest changes in this aspect with the democratization of autonomous cars. Today, there are already vehicles in the world that do not need a driver, but for now we will have to wait for their use to be more common and the legislation regulates their circulation.

Large cities have also experienced the arrival of electric scooters , which flood the sidewalks and cities. This new form of mobility is booming, one that results in a sustainable and very comfortable transport, which the user can park virtually anywhere. But, with the proliferation of these scooters, new problems have also arisen, such as abuses on pedestrians or abuses of other vehicles on scooters.

Deterioration of personal relationships

All these developments have made our day to day something simpler. However, our personal relationships have been damaged. Therefore, the human being must reconsider to preserve his more human side without renouncing all the benefits of technology.