Why 2020 will be outstanding anyway
And how Coronavirus won’t change that.
There we were, on New Year’s Day, posting our Insta stories, Facebook posts, WhatsApp statuses, and content on any non-Zuckerberg-owned social media platforms (do such things still exist?), about how memorable the year ahead of us was going to be.
Let’s see where we’re at now: we almost risked getting into WWIII, Australia caught fire, and a pandemic lurks on us.
…Seems pretty memorable to me, to be honest.
So the situation is really bad, but is the year doomed? That’s just what my question was when I started crunching numbers in front of my laptop the other day.
Here goes.
The Bitcoin halvening
It happened only twice before, and both times the price of the first crypto ever experienced an outstanding surge. And it’s happening again in May.
Essentially, the halvening is a Bitcoin feature that halves the reward given to BTC miners for mining a block — that is, confirming the transactions happening over the network.
So, if they receive 12.5 BTC for every block mined as of now, after the third halvening, it’s going to be 6.25.
You may ask why that’s a good thing. Well, BTC follows a deflationary model: it aims to increase its scarcity, hence its value, over time.
However, a reward that’s too low in comparison with the currency’s value might scare off miners, leading to the deactivation of a lot of nodes. Ultimately, the decentralized consensus mechanism would experience an increasing centralization (making the entire system weaker).
So the answer is, it’s not necessarily a good thing, but it could turn out to be. And very much so.
HODL boys.
The race to Mars
When it comes to the biggest ambitions humanity has set for itself, a name always pops out: Elon Musk.
Amongst his mesmerizing plans and crazily-fast-moving projects, the billionaire entrepreneur famously predicted to complete the creation of a fully operational Mars colony in his lifespan (finishing around 2050, in his opinion).
Naturally, the construction of a colony on Mars can only happen after humanity reaches it — that’s no easy task. However, we might be closer to reaching the red planet than what you think. It seems SpaceX could be able to do that in 2026 already. So where does that put us?
Well, a two-stage-rocket denoted “Starship” is already being built, and its statistics are quite notable: 118 meters tall at its completion, the rocket would stand as the highest ever built.
It seems that we could have an orbital Starship as soon as this year.
Of course, there are other interesting SpaceX projects (Starlink launched just some days ago from Cape Canaveral), but that’s another story.
We’re becoming cyborgs
Musk it is again. This time with a startup that not only seems to be working with the future in its mind but also a very sci-fi kind of future. So much so that it was able to develop technology that, in Musk’s words, allowed a monkey to control a computer with its brain.
Neuralink aims to connect brains and computers and has developed the N1 implant, which is hopefully (or frighteningly) going to begin testing on humans this year.
What makes this technology different from the already existing, similar products looking to simplify human lives is that it seems to be substantially less invasive than ever before.
Say what you will, but if we have to become one with technology, I call dibs on the Tony Stark suit.
The Quantum Advancement
In October last year, Google announced it had conquered a major engineering milestone: Quantum Supremacy.
Roughly speaking, Quantum Supremacy is defined as a quantum computer performing a task that a traditional supercomputer is not able to complete (either in general or in a reasonable time): in Google’s case, we’re looking at a processor that operated a calculation involving random numbers in 200 seconds. Such an operation, says Google, would take a supercomputer 10,000 years. Google’s main rival in the quantum race IBM readily disputed these utterances.
In any case, October of last year stands as a critical event in the story of Computer Science.
With this news, and IBM announcing it will be selling the two first quantum supercomputers outside of the US at CES 2020, we can rest reassured more surprises are to come.
Completely driverless cars
Alright, alright, lemme get this straight: you’re telling me there are 6 levels of autonomy for self-driving cars (0 to 5), and that we’re currently around level 2? Honestly, that doesn’t sound exciting.
What if I told you we might be getting that sweet level 5 by mid-2020?
And yeah, that’s another of Musk’s predictions, by the way, this time referencing his completely electric car company Tesla.
Level 5 is defined as the level at which the driver can get completely distracted: the car needs no human intervention whatsoever and can drive completely on itself in any scenario and weather condition, in total safety. Driver’s help is not required even in emergency cases.
5G
“It causes the virus!”
Yeah. Moving on.
The high-speed network is already available in most of the US, where nationwide coverage is expected by the first half of 2020. Even though not as fast, things are moving pretty rapidly in the rest of the world, too.
Theoretically topping at around 10 Gbits/s (10 times more than 4g!), the fastest speeds over the networks across the world will probably be somewhat close to 2Gbits/s, which still stands as quite impressive.
Now, of course, that does not mean that the mmWave (the fastest 5G) is going to be available in every area in which a 5G network is present, or that everyday connection will always be faster than previous standards, since some advanced 4G networks may even beat “newborn” 5G performances.
However, the deployment of 5G will for sure mark an improvement in average connection speed, which is always great to have.
In conclusion, there is nothing to be happy about, but as history teaches us, the ones who stand to profit more from every moment are the ones who are capable of visualizing the future in its full brightness and start working towards its creation, and that is especially true in moments of crisis.
If you don’t like the world, all you have to do is change it.
Or, if you don’t want to, you could just kill some time.
