1. Techno-Optimism for the 2020s by Noah Smith. While the techno-pessimism of the past decades doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on, Smith argues that the 2020s will bring us even more rampant advances – particularly in the more scientific areas.
  2. How Long Does It Take To Go From Science to Technology? by Matt Clancy. Clancy examined citations made by patents to scientific articles and other metrics to show that it takes approximately 20 years to go from science to technology.
  3. The Next Phase of Social? Listen Closely by Andrew Chen at a16z. Podcasts have seen a massive demand increase in the past year, but Chen argues that the real wave of audio is still ahead, as heightened demand + technological advancements create a great playing field for innovators.
  4. When AI Systems Fail: Introducing the AI Incident Database by Sean McGregor at Partnership on AI. While AI creates many opportunities, we need to be aware of potential pitfalls. The AI Incident Database has been created to highlight exactly those, and guide further development in this area. “Avoiding repeated AI failures requires making past failures known.”
  5. What Comes After Smartphones? by Ben Evans. As smartphones become old news, the questions arises what will follow. Perhaps AR, or VR — or perhaps the next innovation lies in the second order effects of everyone having a smartphone.
  6. Synthetic Biology 2020–2030: Six Commercially-Available Products That Are Changing Our World by Christopher A. Voigt (2020). As the combined mass of human-made objects surpasses the mass of natural objects on Earth, it is high time for the progress in synthetic biology to bring commercial results. Voigt describes six products that are market ready.
  7. Meet Me in the Metaverse by Jonathan Lai for a16z. Even though VR improvements in 2020 were sorely lacking, we can see the building blocks for a full virtual experience coming together – be it in the shift of content creation from professional creators to users, or the increasing presence of AI in the content production process.
  8. AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld by Kevin Kelly for Wired Magazine. Kelly has consistently been one of the tech visionaries to follow. Even though the article is somewhat dated in our rapid-fire world, the content is just as relevant today. “Everything connected to the internet will be connected to the mirrorworld.”
  9. The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, Who Will Build It, and Fortnite by Matthew Ball. Metaverse part III — a long read about the defining characteristics of the metaverse and which companies are best set up to be dominant players.
  10. 52 Things I Learned In 2020 by Tom Whitwell for Fluxx Studio. It’s time to look back and reflect what we learned. Cheat-code is looking at other people’s learnings to add some last items to the list. As an end note to this year: “In Warsaw’s Gruba Kaśka water plant there are eight clams with sensors attached to their shells. If the clams close because they don’t like the taste of the water, the city’s supply is automatically shut off.”