In 2021, we met concepts such as Metaverse and NFT (digital certificates).
Facebook has taken a new direction by concentrating on virtual reality.
We have witnessed the internet stumble a few times, although it has worked well during the closures due to the pandemic.
We have seen that the chips in every device we use and which we take for granted are not eternal.
We have compiled some developments in the field of technology in 2021.
January: Trump, Twitter, Facebook
Even though former US President Donald Trump lost the election, it continued to be in the news in 2021.
Trump’s Twitter account was blocked on January 7, first for a few hours and then permanently.
The day before, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol; but Trump’s tweet was quite provocative.
Later, Facebook also suspended Trump’s account for two years.
Social media companies have brought up new rules regarding the accounts of politicians with millions of followers.
February: WhatsApp
WhatsApp, the most used digital messaging application in the world, announced that it will change its terms of use and privacy policy on February 8.
Due to the mandatory sharing of WhatsApp account information with Facebook, millions of people left this platform and turned to its competitors.
WhatsApp announced that those who do not accept the updated terms of use will not be able to message through the application as of May 15.
But after more than $250 million in penalties imposed by the Ireland-based data protection agency, the company had to change its terms of use to make it more clear exactly how it uses the information it collects.
March: McAfee
Anti-virus program founder and software developer, John McAfee, was accused of posting on Twitter in an attempt to increase the price of cryptocurrencies.
A controversial name, McAfee was then detained in Spain for tax evasion. A few hours after the court approved his extradition to the United States, McAfee was found dead in his prison cell in Barcelona.
April: Chip shortage
One of the issues that marked 2021 was the shortage of chips. Closing to home due to the pandemic, working from home has led to an increase in demand for many devices.
One of the first to bring the chip shortage to the agenda was American technology giant Cisco. However, his expectation that this problem may last for six months seems quite optimistic today.
Chip maker Arm predicts that the problem may persist until the end of 2022.
May: Trump’s return
Trump was on the agenda again in May with the news that he had established his own communication platform.
Some said it was a 1990s style blog and it was shut down shortly after.
Trump later announced that he would launch a more advanced application called Truth Social, which will strengthen his influence on social media, in 2022.
The initiative, which has attracted 1 billion dollars of investment to date, has been the subject of an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
June: Internet outage
There was a major internet outage in June that affected many large companies. Technology companies such as Amazon, Reddit, and Twitch, as well as British Guardian and American New York Times, were also affected.
Many sites went unreachable for nearly an hour after a previously unknown error was accidentally triggered by a customer at cloud computing service provider Fastly.
Similar problems experienced during the year in companies such as Amazon Web Services, Akamai and Cloudflare brought into question the concentration of internet service in the hands of a few companies.
July: Bezos steps down as Amazon CEO
Jeff Bezos, the founder of US e-commerce giant Amazon, left his job as CEO of the company he founded in his garage 27 years ago.
When he left, the company was valued at $1.8 trillion.
However, like many technology giants, Amazon has become increasingly questioned both for its attitude towards employees in its warehouses and for its ability to monopolize retail sales.
However, Bezos continued to be the subject of news with his space travel.
In October, he made space travel on his company’s Blue Origin rocket, with William Shatner, who played the first Captain Kirk character in the Star Trek series.
August: The boy who made money with NFT
This year, the phenomenon of NFT (non-fungible token), which can be defined as digital certificates, entered our lives. But we’ve also seen that a 12-year-old can make money from it during school holidays.
Benyamin Ahmed, who lives in London, earned 290 thousand pounds (approximately 3.3 million TL at the exchange rate of the period) by selling the graphic series Weird Whales (Weird Whales), which he prepared during his summer vacation, as NFT.
Twitter’s founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, sold his first tweet at auction 15 years ago when he was establishing the platform. Sina Estavi, the highest bidder, paid $2.9 million for the tweet.
September: i**P**hone shake
The news that the camera system of iPhone phones was adversely affected by motorcycle shakes attracted great attention.
Apple has released details about the issue spotted by MacRumours. Accordingly, engine vibrations were damaging the phone’s optical image stabilization and closed-loop autofocus system.
October: The company known as Facebook
In October, two important developments regarding Facbook became news.
Facebook has announced that it will undergo a major rebrand and change its corporate name to ‘Meta’.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facbook, explained the reason for this change, saying, “I hope that in time we will be seen as a metaverse company.”
Metaverse, on the other hand, is considered at first glance as an enhanced version of Virtual Reality VR technology; but some think that metaverse technology is the future of the internet.
Others also viewed the move as an attempt to distract attention from the problems Facebook faces with its real-world content.
November: Hacker hunt
2021 has been a busy year for cybercrime. Numerous ransomware attacks and viruses have been detected.
In November, BBC cybersecurity reporter Joe Tidy tried to reach hackers, most of whom were based in Russia, affiliated with the notorious cybercrime network Evil Corp.
Tidy couldn’t reach them but saw how rich they were and how they lived in luxury.
The Kremlin denies that the hackers are directly linked to the Russian state. But experts say this country welcomes hackers, provided they don’t target Russian citizens. US security officials, on the other hand, claim that they had a share in hacking other countries’ institutions.
Range: Radioactive necklace
Due to the pandemic, we have witnessed a lot of disinformation about vaccines, Covid and politics this year as well.
Technology has also not been able to avoid being the target of conspiracy theories. 5G transmitters were attacked on the grounds that they emit dangerous radio waves.
We have read the news that the labels that are claimed to protect from radiation by affixing to mobile phones are sold on Amazon.
Also this month, Dutch authorities found that necklaces sold for allegedly shielding against the radiation allegedly emitted by 5G technology were radioactive.