10 Breakthrough Technologies In 2022
Predicting the future is hard and risky. Predicting the future in the computing industry is even harder and riskier due to dramatic changes in technology and limitless challenges to innovation. However, the below list of 10 breakthrough technologies in 2022 is extremely likely to debut this year. Only a small fraction of innovations truly disrupt the state of the art. Some are not practical or cost-effective, some are ahead of their time, and some simply do not have a market. These advancements in technology are cost-effective, extremely practical, and highly in demand.
10 Breakthrough Technologies In 2022 :
1. The End Of Passwords
For decades, we’ve needed passwords to do things online. New forms of authentication will finally let us get rid of them for good. Instead, we’ll use a link sent via email, a push notification, or a biometric scan. Not only are these methods easier, you don’t have to remember your face, but they tend to be more secure.
The switch would make it significantly harder for hackers to log in to people’s devices.
Weak passwords are the entry point for the majority of attacks across accounts. There are 579 password attacks every second, that’s 18 billion every year.
Passwords are incredibly inconvenient to create, remember and manage across all our accounts.
A glance at someone’s social media can give any hacker a head start on logging into their accounts. Once that password and email combination has been compromised, it’s often sold on the dark web.
2. Covid-19 Pill
A new drug from Pfizer provides effective and broad protection against the covid-19 virus, including the newest variants. Now other companies are developing similar medicines. Combined with vaccines, these pills could provide a way for the world to finally exit the pandemic.
PAXLOVID™ (PF-07321332; ritonavir) was found to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% compared to placebo in non-hospitalized high-risk adults with COVID-19
In the overall study population through Day 28, no deaths were reported in patients who received PAXLOVID™ as compared to 10 deaths in patients who received placebo.
3. Long-Lasting Grid Battery
We’re using more renewable power than ever. But what happens when the sun sets or the wind stops? Grid operators need a way to store electricity for later. New iron-based batteries may be up to the task. They’re made using abundant materials and could be cheaper and more practical than other types of grid storage.
The big picture here is of course renewable energy. Solar, wind, and other forms of green energy produce power as and when it’s available, rather than when it’s needed. Sometimes they may not produce much at all, for days at a time. So as the world starts to transition away from cheap, responsive, and heavily polluting energy sources like coal, one of the great challenges is creating buffer facilities that can cheaply store and release energy as required.
Tesla more or less kicked the grid-level energy storage sector off in 2017 when it built the world’s biggest battery in South Australia. The project was a huge success and spawned many similar, larger developments worldwide.
4. AI For Protein Folding
Nearly everything your body does, it does with proteins. And the way a protein folds determines its activity. But figuring out proteins’ structure can take months. Now an AI called AlphaFold2 has solved this long-standing biological puzzle, which could make it possible to quickly design drugs for a wide range of diseases.
AlphaFold is already being used by, for instance, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) has advanced its research into life-saving cures for diseases that disproportionately affect the poorer parts of the world, and the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth (CEI) is using AlphaFold’s predictions to help engineer faster enzymes for recycling some of our most polluting single-use plastics.
A team at the University of Colorado Boulder is finding promise in using AlphaFold predictions to study antibiotic resistance, while a group at the University of California San Francisco has used them to increase their understanding of SARS-CoV-2 biology.
