The world of technology never sleeps, never stops, never remains content with where it’s at. The speed of technological innovation has gained critical velocity and COVID-19 has certainly given it a significant push. We’re living in a unique situation, where we’re in a massive pandemic, but we have the tools to overcome it in surprising ways.
That’s what we’re going to give our attention to – the progress caused by the pandemic as well as certain trends that have been in the works for quite some time.
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Early adopters tend to win big, when a technology first becomes available. In a competitive world where responsibility falls squarely onto the individual to progress, keeping track of how the tech is changing greatly improves productivity and personal wellbeing.
Plus, we’re living in the future and might not even know it. Getting to know what technologies are becoming widely available opens up opportunities that might not have been there before.
The digitalization of the workplace has been a continual process as working from home has been on the rise in the past decade. The pandemic only hastened the process and the digital office is now a reality. Same as with education. Although there have been attempts at different times to get back to the classroom, school work and university lectures have been taking place in the home.
This has necessitated investment into video conferencing tools and digital classroom services that are aimed at organizing and coordinating students in a given class. Although not every child or university student has readily available personal laptops at home, the numbers are strong enough to support digital education nationwide in certain countries like Switzerland, Norway, and Austria.
In non-pandemic news, study applications have also been on the rise. From language apps to flash cards and note taking, old analog study methods are making their jump into mobile formats.
This current trend is a blast from the past, because following specific news feeds via RSS has been possible since the beginning of the Internet. Really Simple Syndication was the first major way to organize digital spaces rather than get lost in the world of hyperlinks and individual sites. RSS did fall off the map for a good long while, but is not making a comeback.
The big reason behind this is the way RSS feed readers have expanded their capabilities. Readers like Inoreader pack a lot more punch than just reading your subscriptions. It becomes an active tool of content discovery. Inoreader has a versatile discovery zone and searches to hit every spot. Not only that but it offers support for social media and other major platforms like Reddit. Paired with its browser extension, you really get a comprehensive experience of the Internet.
RSS readers are suitable for leisure as well as business and research. Journalists, students, writers and IT professionals can greatly improve their productivity with RSS.
Personalization algorithms have been around for quite some time now. Spotify ‘for you’ mixes, YouTube front page, Google News and Facebook feed are all based on your previous activity in an attempt to deliver the content you want most and find most relevant. Google search results is also another service that heavily relies on previous search history to better tailor the links it shows. However, between the personalization along political divide and the radicalization that takes place over on YouTube, personalization algorithms are definitely not perfect.
Smart personalization algorithms are ready to move beyond social media and other digital services and into physical spaces. The idea is to service customers based on their individual preferences and needs. Brands smart enough to look beyond their buyer persona as the end all be all and cater to individuals will come on top.
AI has certainly made a big splash in recent years for its amusing attempts to simulate very human pursuits such as writing and art. We certainly laughed at all the bots fed commercial scripts and asked to generate their own scripts, which were then filmed. That’s the perfect example of content created by AI for the enjoyment of people.
What’s more interesting is the fact AI is being used in journalism through automation processes that parse through high volumes of data and information. Data journalism greatly benefits from these algorithms. However, the trend shows the application of machine learning algorithms in the generation of texts. Innovations in language expressions are plentiful.
Other types of AI-generated content include the creation of songs (Eurovision song), deep fakes of celebrities and interviews, and the creation of entirely new people through projects like This Person Does Not Exist. This is perhaps the one trend that makes people uncomfortable and rightfully so, because it further blurs the line between human and machine.
Telehealth has been a movement taking form over the past decade as the concept of personalized medicine really took off. We’re already seen wearable medical devices and applications meant to monitor a person’s wellbeing and any symptoms, but it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that showed telehealth’s potential to maintain our health, while doing the most to prevent the spread of the virus.
At its simplest, telehealth democratizes further access to health services by allowing patients to get in touch with their doctors via communication technology. This can range from the humble smartphone to Zoom or a specific application.
Ultimately it’s all about connection and coordination as a way to responsibly manage the already strained hospital resources. One of the best examples is the first remote diagnostic procedure in the UK, which took place over 5G. This has been done via the 5G Connected Ambulance, which as the name suggests establishes stable connections not just between patients and medical experts, but also ambulance workers.
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