The Top Five Tech Advances In The Last Five Years That Changed Everything

When we discuss technology, as we do every single week, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. It’s no secret: things are moving quickly, and the development of new products will only continue to rise more and more exponentially as time progresses. From gadgets to products, to services, technological innovation drives human development, just in the same way that human development drives technological innovation. However, we often move at a pace too rapid to fully comprehend the full scope of what we develop, too fast to understand exactly which developments will actually further our species, and which are simply there to prove things can take an alternative route. 

As such, we deem it worthwhile to breakdown the five technological innovations of the last five years that will be most pivotal in years to come. In an attempt to determine what kind of technology is actually here to stay, here are the Top 5 technological inventions from the last five years that have proven themselves the most impactful. 

5. Smart Wearables

Wearables have been around for a while. Watches, bracelets and jewelry have been around for millennia. Electronic watches and wristbands have been on the market for a long time. However, never have we had a properly smart wearable tech. Nowadays, wearable technology is capable of things science fiction writers only dreamed of a few years ago. An Apple Watch, for example, is considered a “smart” wearable, as, while able to record the same biometrics as a Fitbit, it also hosts enough computing power to employ the data it receives and provide its user with a graphical interface detailed enough for its manipulation. The technology is powerful enough to change the way we interact without bodies, and will doubtlessly continue to develop into a new, fully developed technological arsenal that lives right on our wrists. 

4. Practical Augmented Reality

Augmented reality has also been around for some time. However, nowadays, augmented reality has finally moved past the walls of entertainment and on towards practical applications, that integrate Artificial Intelligence and other such innovative machine learning paradigms. Its applications catalogue constantly expanding, augmented reality walks the line between being a product and tool. We can adapt its use to the customs of industries like the gaming and entertainment ones, crafting a product, or we can adapt its use to research and education, crafting a proper tool. Luckily, we do not have to choose. We can produce our new couch out of thin air, sit in it, and from it visualize distant “marsquakes” as if we stood on the red giant’s surface. Quite a leap, indeed, but one we must make with caution and responsibility.

3. Real-Time Translators

This is a massive innovation, that nobody is really talking about. Google, as well as other entities, have been working tirelessly to craft a class of technology that is able to listen in real time and translate auditory input into whatever language the wearer requires. With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the process is ever closer to becoming a reality. This is an incredible advancement in science and technology, as it will quite literally destroy communicative barriers and connect the world in ways that would never have been thought of as little as seven years ago. 

2. Predictive Analytics

Now, predictive analytics have also been around a long time. However, the most recent developments in deep learning, machine learning, neural networks and artificial intelligence have made predictive analytics basically -self-sufficient and self-sustaining. At this point in time, computers predict computer behavior for us, in a continuous loop of extensively predictive analytics that will morph society into one that gathers all of its data from alarmingly precise predictive analytics that basically run themselves. 

1 . The Cloud

The cloud has to take the cake, as something that was basically inexistent and inconceivable over five years ago. Nowadays, with largely unlimited amounts of online storage, and largely uncontrolled access to the internet of things, the world is connected to as much content as its ever been. What’s amazing, quite literally, is that the proverbial cloud will continue to grow, as will the magnitude of content we place upon it. Things that used to be physical, touchable, writable, now exist in some unphysical space, in the backroom of some remote server, accessible to whoever has the right credentials. The cloud has made content infinite, and will only, necessarily, continue to expand and expand until all things exist within this ethereal network of content.