2020

Emerging Tech Brew's Year in Review: Part One

Today we’ll look back at all the highlights and lowlights of the 2020 rollercoaster. In order to do that, we reread every single Emerging Tech Brew, extracted the key themes and stats, and got very sick of ourselves in the process. 

Responding to coronavirus

At the onset of the pandemic, tech companies in China and then the U.S. were quick to take action. Amid a surge of digital activity, our networks and internet infrastructure largely held up. But the shifts to remote learning and WFH also underscored the digital divide facing Americans and citizens of other countries.

Many 3D printing companies and enthusiasts stepped up to help make personal protective equipment (PPE). Demand rose for machines that couldn’t get sick. Every robotics startup we interviewed—from drones to sidewalk bots to self-driving cars—said they’d seen a surge of inbound interest in their technology. 

Consumer tech

‘Twas a banner year for screen time. Streaming, social, and gaming services all competed with each other for eyeball share. 

TikTok’s Q1 was “the best quarter for any app ever,” Sensor Tower reported. Users spent 2.8 billion hours on the app in March alone, and TikTok passed 2 billion downloads in April. Facebook reported 2.7 billion monthly active users at the end of Q2. The number of active Twitch streamers grew from 3.9 million in January to 7.5 million in September.

On Feb. 28, we wrote: “Online gaming platforms are eating the imagination of the tech world.” We were describing Roblox, which is now preparing its public debut. Unity, which builds game-making tools, IPO’d in September. Fortnite parent Epic Games is staying private but raised funds at a $17+ billion valuation. And Big Tech debuted cloud gaming services. 

There were too many hardware developments to recap. Most notably, Apple made serious strides toward total integration of its hardware and software ecosystem. It dominated smartwatch and earbuds shipments.

• Facebook’s hardware efforts gained momentum, as Quest VR headsets and Portals flew off digital shelves. Google moved closer toward consummating the Fitbit tie-up, and Amazon kept releasing whatever experimental stuff it was feeling. 

Controversy 

In the name of coronavirus response, governments in some corners of the world tapped mobile location data to monitor citizens and curtail civil liberties. 

• China rolled out sophisticated AI tracking tools. It also passed a sweeping security law subjecting Hongkongers to new digital surveillance. 
• Over the summer, the U.S. government used drones to surveil protestors in multiple cities. 

It wasn’t just government surveillance that took off. In the U.S., scores of businesses, schools, and universities deployed remote monitoring software as work (and homework) shifted online. But we also saw some notable rebukes to surveillance tech, with major U.S. cities and companies placing guardrails on facial recognition. 

Algorithmic bias was a persistent concern, even as researchers published record amounts of ethical AI papers. Early in December, Timnit Gebru, the co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team, said the company had dismissed her. 

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2020

Part Two

Geopolitics

Though the scientific community collaborated on an unprecedented scale this year, the camaraderie didn’t extend to the tech industry. 

The Splinternet is real. Our global internet is increasingly balkanized across separate 5G networks and submarine cables, and divided among distinct digital app ecosystems and cloud computing services. 

Washington and Beijing represent the world’s dominant tech blocs, while Brussels sets the agenda for regulation. The three capitals traded digital barbs all year. 

• Semiconductors have emerged as a key proxy for the U.S.-China decoupling. But tech competition also extends to AI, digital currency, robotics, quantum computing, and new-energy vehicles. 
• Japan, South Korea, the U.S., and some European countries encouraged companies to reshore manufacturing from China. India and the EU restricted Chinese investment in domestic startups. 
• The EU has continued sharpening the tip of its regulatory spear, setting new rules for American platforms and enforcing penalties for anticompetitive behavior. The EU also squeezed in proposals for more comprehensive tech regulation through the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act.  

As other parts the world leapfrog to new technologies, they’ve adopted a blend of Chinese and European data governance models. Data fortresses and localization—i.e., storing data domestically and placing restrictions on its cross-border flow—are becoming the norm. And most importantly, new superapps and unicorns are emerging (especially in Southeast Asia, especially Jio). 

With all the flux, and high levels of fiscal stimulus, bitcoin had a great year. The cryptocurrency rocketed past $20,000 and reached an all-time high earlier this month. 

Pushing the boundaries

In spite of all the headwinds, 2020 dealt us innovation in spades. 

Scientists willed great medical breakthroughs into reality, developing and shipping mRNA vaccines in record time. One premier AI lab released a 175-billion parameter language model, and another closed in on a perennial challenge in biology. SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, Apple lifted the wraps on the Arm-based M1 chip, and Waymo delivered a fully driverless service.  

Looking forward, there’s no reason to think the cadence of technological change and invention will slow in the 2020s. 

+ What’s missing here: We didn’t dwell on AI, 5G, or e-commerce. But that’s because we produced in-depth guides for each topic this year! 

• 5G: Our next step in wireless networks 
• AI: The human’s handbook to computers that think 
• Special delivery: How tech powers e-commerce, from discovery to delivery 

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BITS & BYTES

Here’s our timeline of the most interesting stats of the year. 

Twenty-one percent of U.S. adults regularly wear a smartwatch. (January)

The Apple Watch outsold the entire Swiss watch industry by 10 million units in 2019. (February)

Of the 22 biggest banks in Europe, 22 say their primary cloud services provider was American. (March)

Nineteen percent of U.S. adults have bought or tried a VR headset. (April)

🗣 Eighteen percent of Americans would put their name on an autonomous vehicle waitlist. (May)

Surveillance cameras can be found in nearly 30% of smart homes in the U.S., UK, Germany, and France. Meanwhile, 23% of Americans think the government surveils their offline conversations. (June)

By 2025, 148 million “jobs of the future” (software development, cloud, AI, privacy, etc.) will be created. (July)

Southeast Asia will have 310 million digital consumers by the end of 2020. (August)

NASA says it generated an economic output of $64 billion in the 2019 fiscal year. The agency received $21.5 billion, or 0.5% of the overall federal budget. (September)

The People’s Bank of China says it’s processed more than 1.1 billion yuan (over $160 million) across 3.1+ million digital yuan transactions. (October)

Bitcoin passes $15,000. (November)

A Chinese industrial equipment manufacturer sold almost 100 dump trucks during a three-hour Pinduoduo live-streaming session with 3.7 million viewers. (December)

OVERLOOKED/UNDERHYPED

We got some things right. 

Like the tech industry, this newsletter was early to sound the alarm about what was then a mysterious contagion in China. We first mentioned coronavirus on Jan. 29 and wrote our first top-fold story about it two days later. We wrote about how masks were hampering the effectiveness of facial recognition in China on Feb. 7. Finally, in early February, we covered how the then-epidemic could derail Mobile World Congress and disrupt tech supply chains (spoiler: it did).

But we also got some things wrong. Most notably, we often covered digital contract tracing systems and implied they’d have widespread adoption. That hasn’t been the case.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Let’s end this on a weird, fun note. Presenting the wildest (true) selections from Going Phishing:

1. “X Æ A-12 may not be a legal name.”
2. “Apple doesn't let movie villains use iPhones, according to director Rian Johnson.”
3. “Aides are teaching the Queen of England how to video chat so she can keep up with the relatives.”
4. “In an apparent attempt to make as many enemies as possible, Goldman Sachs deemed bitcoin an unsuitable investment.”
5. “The U.S. Space Force uses horses.”

That’s a wrap for the year. Here’s to a healthier, happier 2021, which will no doubt be filled with more news and weird headlines.