How Technology Has Changed?

Technology changed has radically changed our societies and our daily lives. Since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000

From smartphones to social media to healthcare, here is a brief history of the 21st-century technology revolution.

A little over 20 years ago, the dot-com bubble burst, causing the stocks of many tech companies to fall. Some companies, like Amazon, quickly regained their value, but many others lagged. In the two decades since that accident, technology has advanced in many ways.

There are many more people online today than at the turn of the millennium. As for broadband access, in 2000, only half of Americans had broadband access at home. Today that number is over 90%.

Of course, this broadband expansion was not just an American phenomenon. Similar growth can be observed worldwide; While less than 7% of the world’s population was online in 2000, today, more than half of the world’s population has access to the Internet.

Similar trends can be observed in the use of cell phones. In the early 2000s, there were 740 million cell phone subscriptions worldwide. Two decades later, that number has exceeded 8 billion, which means that there are more cell phones in the world than there are persons today.

Media And Media Consumption

The last 20 years have had a significant impact on how and where we consume media. In the early 2000s, many technology companies were still focus on expanding the communications for work with expanded bandwidth for streaming video and other multimedia applications typical today.

Others have taken the path of expanding media options beyond traditional media. Early technology pioneers like PlanetOut did this by providing an alternative means of communication for LGBTQIA communities as more and more people became connected.

As a result of these early new media options, new communities, and alternative media came the massive growth of social media. In 2004 there were fewer than a million people on Myspace; Facebook hadn’t even started yet. In 2018, Facebook had more than 2.26 billion users, and other websites also reached hundreds of millions of users.

While these new online communities and communication channels have provided large spaces for alternative voices, their increased use has created growing misinformation and polarization problems.

Today, many tech startups are focus on maintaining these online media rooms while mitigating the misinformation that comes with them. Lately, some technology pioneers have also explored the topic, including TruePic, which focuses on photo identification, and Two Hat, which develops artificial intelligence-powered content moderation for social media.

Climate Change And Green Technologies

Today, many scientists are rotating to technology to lead us into a carbon-free world. Although climate change is being given renew attention today, technology’s efforts to find a solution are not new. In 2001, after the collapse, green tech offered a unique investment opportunity for tech investors, which sparked a boom in investments in renewable energy startups, including Bloom Energy, a technology pioneer in 2010.

For the past two decades, technology startups have only broadened their approach to climate. Today, many are focusing on initiatives that go well beyond clean energy to reduce the effects of climate change.

This year’s technology pioneers, various startups, including Carbon Engineering and Climeworks, have started implementing CO2 capture technology. These technologies remove CO2 directly from the air and allow scientists to mitigate some of the damage caused by fossil fuels that have already been burne.

Another area of ​​growth for today’s tech startups is innovation in food systems. Many companies like Aleph Farms and Air Protein are creating innovative alternatives to meat and dairy products.

Biotechnology And Health

The beginning of the 2000s also marked the culmination of a biotechnology boom that began in the mid-1990s: Many companies have focused on advancing biotechnology by improving technological research.

Actelion Pharmaceuticals, a technology pioneer, was one such company. Actelion’s technology examined the unique layer of cells that separates each blood vessel from the bloodstream. Like many other biotech companies at the time, they focused on researching and treating specific diseases.

While many technology companies today still focus on disease research and treatment, many others are focus on providing healthcare. Telemedicine has increased in recent years, and many young technologies are expanding the possibilities of virtual healthcare. New technologies such as virtual tours and chatbots are being used to serve people, especially during Covid-19.