Dear readers, meanwhile, Merry Christmas late and happy 2022 early.
In this end of the year, allow us to interpret the meaning of the column under your nose in a somewhat imaginative way. A column that usually deals with briefly telling you how a tool, a concept or an area that in some way has to do with technology has changed.
But since tradition has it that in the last days of the year articles are published continuously on the ratings of the three hundred and sixty-five days that are ending, today we will dare even more. In short: this Monday we will dedicate ourselves to the next year at the end.
So we will try to answer, albeit in a nutshell, a question: how has 2021 changed? The year we are leaving, how is it similar and how is it different from the one we inaugurated almost twelve months ago? Has he aged well or badly?
What elements of novelty and hope has it brought, and where instead things appear worse than before? Let's find out by analyzing five macro-topics.
How 2021 has changed: the pandemic
It is useless to deny it: we are all in that cartoon (extraordinary as always) by Altan. Where a character says: “No more viruses. Let's change the subject ”, and the other replies:“ Yes. Let's talk about the pandemic ”.
2021 blossomed in full second wave, after a summer in which we had too casually dismissed Covid as an already overcome problem.
But how has 2021 changed in this sense? On the one hand, there was the most extraordinary achievement against the Coronavirus pandemic: the vaccine. Which, despite all the limitations of the case, was produced with exceptional rapidity and - we are realizing it at this close of the year, in full fourth wave - has dramatically reduced the number of deaths and hospitalized.
But there is a downside. The protraction of the pandemic, perhaps also due to a certain general exasperation, has also shown the more primitive side of many of us. We are talking about the senseless attitudes of the no vax, which have as a dangerous corollary the spread of buffaloes on the vaccination campaign, capable today of running very quickly through social platforms.
So, it seems to us that 2021 is closing with a world rather sharply divided in two. There are those who are always happier to stick to a scrupulous prophylaxis to contain the virus (vaccinations, tampons, use of masks, social distancing, sanitation, etc.) and those who prefer to give voice to the more presumptuous, selfish, irrational and basically weak side of himself.
How 2021 has changed: technology (and its limits)
If we were to tell you how 2021 has changed from the point of view of technology, we would not want to dwell on the achievements, innovations and inventions of these twelve months in the tech field. Which have also been many and often noteworthy.
If anything, we are interested in a broader reasoning. Own in fact, in the course of these twelve months, technology has shown its darker side, and it has done so in various forms.
Think for example of the many discussions on artificial intelligence. More and more fundamental in various fields, but often bent as an instrument of control to the limits of legality (and sometimes even beyond). Or let's think of the Facebook Papers scandal, that is, how much what is shown to us on social platforms is anything but neutral. Not to mention the endless discussions about privacy: do you remember, for example, the panic that spread globally when WhatsApp broke the news that it would change its terms of use?
Speaking of privacy, 2021 was the year of hacker attacks using ransomware. And Italy has been hit several times, starting with the massive offensive against the Lazio Region.
2021 therefore closes more aware of the risks and threats of a world that is inevitably more and more pervasive.
The metaverse and his brothers
2021 has shown that the world we live in is no longer enough for us.
And he did it in two ways. The first with the definitive consecration of the virtual as an (increasingly complete and autonomous) alternative to the real. Yes, we refer primarily to the metaverse, but not only that. How not to mention, at least, the cryptocurrency boom? Or the (fleeting?) Fashion of NFT, from which even the so-called cryptoart was created?
How 2021 has changed: space tourism
But to understand how 2021 has changed, we must say that the escape from the real world did not make us take refuge only in the virtual one.
We have also ushered in none other than space tourism. First with a challenge between the super rich, won by Richard Branson, who burned Jeff Bezos on time.
Then with the first flight, thanks to Elon Musk's SpaceX (man of the year according to Time), of a crew of non-professionals only. And to follow, with a series of private flights, the most striking of which was certainly that of ninety-year-old William Shatner, the actor who played the legendary Captain Kirk in Star Trek.
Discount
The changing climate. Why is global warming a ...
- Mercalli, Luca (Author)
The climate
Of course, these escapes a little here a little there seem almost the natural reaction to a world that enjoys ever more precarious health.
Here, at the end of the article, we will avoid giving you an account of the merciless (increasingly depressing) numbers concerning the climate emergency. Or of the many climate summits that have marked 2021: all announced with great fanfare, but which almost always led to very poor concrete results.
We prefer to remember the only summit that really gives us high hopes: Youth4Climate, held in Milan at the end of September and self-managed by 400 young people from all over the world.
For the rest, dear readers, before planning the next escape from reality, perhaps wearing a pair of viewers or booking a weekend on Mars, we could try to turn off the car engine at traffic lights, limit the consumption of plastic and put a sweatshirt instead of keeping the house heating in Siberia mode.
Many small individual gestures, together, move mountains. Just as three hundred and sixty-five days, one in a row to the other, make up a year.
To that end, good 2022!
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