Technologies to consider in 2020

New technologies refer to all the new media that, in recent years, have facilitated the flow of information (internet, digital video disc [DVD], portable computers and all the technological devices that are used to produce, develop and bring communication). With regard to the media, new technologies have enabled digital newspapers, Internet advertising, music and video broadcasts without the need for radio or sound equipment, as well as communication. snapshot between people from different countries with a much lower cost than that of conventional telephone services.

Talking about new media means referring to the Internet, electronic media and all forms of communication derived from these media, which have revolutionized information and communication processes as they grow by leaps and bounds throughout the world. Although in Colombia the history of new media is quite short, its enormous influence has already begun to be felt and understood.

Before they had the enormous impact on the social structure that they have today and for a few decades, both the Internet and electronic communication took time to develop and mature; However, once they succeeded, and despite the great amount of criticism, it has become evident that these media recover certain aspects of oral societies, such as the simultaneity of action, perception and reaction; They have also made sensory experience again an essential form of communication, although in a different way than previously understood, since physical contact between people is no longer needed to feel the body and the sensations of the other: communication electronic does not think about the physical limitations of time or space (an example of this is electronic messages,

Internet

It is the interconnection of different computer networks on a global level, all computers that are connected to this world network, can connect with any other computer that is also connected. This is why we can easily access computer networks of companies, educational institutes, officials, etc. The need to interconnect between different computer networks was born in the United States, when the Department of Defense decided to have a communications network that could be operated from different sites in a secure manner. This creation was called ARPA, which connected computers located in different places, although they worked under different operating systems. For this communication to be possible, codes called protocols had to be developed, which were in charge of Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn who presented their creation in 1973, seeing its functionality, this connection ceased to be of strict military use and began to link different educational and research centers. Shortly after, networks belonging to European organizations joined, initiating the connection called World Wide Web or World Wide Web in 1990. Currently this type of connection is not only used for educational or research purposes, it is an important commercial tool where Any company can present its products or services and in some cases visitors can access them through online purchases. This connection ceased to be of strict military use and began to link different educational and research centers. A short time later, networks belonging to European organizations joined, initiating the connection called the World Wide Web or World Wide Web in 1990. Currently, this type of connection is not only used for educational or research purposes, it is an important commercial tool where Any company can present its products or services and in some cases visitors can access them through online purchases. This connection ceased to be of strict military use and began to link different educational and research centers. A short time later, networks belonging to European organizations joined, initiating the connection called the World Wide Web or World Wide Web in 1990. Currently this type of connection is not only used for educational or research purposes, it is an important commercial tool where Any company can present its products or services and in some cases visitors can access them through online purchases.

The Internet arrived in Colombia in 1993 thanks to the need that the Universidad de los Andes had to stay connected with other universities in other countries that decided that they would only exchange data through the Internet. This entity assumed the necessary costs to start this type of connection in our country, some time later other universities joined the project. Telecom, was the telecommunications company that commercially led Internet coverage nationwide, launching it to the general public in 1998, the first Internet connections were made through telephone lines, so in 2001 a same rate was regulated for that access to this communication network would be easier.

In Colombia, not many people have this and other electronic resources (in 2002, only around 2.6% of the population had access to the network), mainly due to economic issues, even due to Despite the fact that current education seeks to sensitize students to this new multimedia medium that integrates elements of the media such as radio, video, sound, text, etc. Nowadays, in Colombia, the use that is given the most to the internet is that of an email generator and the rapid search for punctual information (it is evident that there is a lack of education in this regard, and that the vast majority of people are unaware of the enormous capabilities offered by electronic media).

In the network, the most attractive and better designed portals proliferate, the shopping sites of all kinds of things that promise to change the lifestyle of today's societies and that seek to facilitate the lives of consumers.

In our country we are still far from these great changes, because according to theorists such as Jesús Martín Barbero, Latin America is still an area where human contact is necessary.

Satellite antenna

The satellite antenna is a device located on the ground, which serves to receive any type of information sent by a satellite located in space by sending radio frequency signals, no matter how far there is between the two.

The first satellites were put into orbit in 1960 and from that date on, satellite antennas installed by the United States government began to be used. The triumph of satellite communication was on July 21, 1969, when 600 million people saw astronaut Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon, under the control of the Houston station. Home Box Office (HBO) was the first company to use a satellite network for transmission.

The first satellite signal seen by Colombians, in 1968, was motivated by the visit of Pope Paul VI to the country, for which the installation of an antenna was requested. This process was led by the only telecommunications company that existed at the time, TELECOM, which was in charge of acquiring two more antennas. Some time later, the national government approved that other telecommunications companies have the opportunity to manage these resources.

Computer

A contributor to modern scientific advancements, the computer is an electronic machine or device capable of receiving instructions for storing and ordering data and calculating information at high speeds. The first mechanical calculating machine was invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642 and thereafter advances were made that provided ever more complex machines, in the 19th century Charles Babbaje elaborated the principles of the modern computer. Analog computers began to be built in the early 20th century and during World War II what was considered the first fully electronic digital computer was built. Year after year, advances have been made in the computer industry to have the powerful and economical (taking into account what they do) equipment that we have in our homes. Currently computers are a fundamental part of the articles of a home and are used for the presentation of written and graphic works, facilitating their preparation. Its component elements are getting smaller and smaller, this is a trend to continue for the future.

DVD

The acronym DVD stands for versatile disc or digital video disc, and the player can read CDs and DVDs since they are both optical discs but a DVD can store up to 25 times the amount of information than a CD, which has done that the systems that used CDs were being replaced by new technology. They were originally used to play laser video quality movies, other than CD movies, with pixels, where the images are not as sharp. With the highest sound and image quality, simulating a home theater, DVD`s are at the top of the list of products to be purchased as entertainment appliances.

== Scanner Optical scanners are devices that connected to a computer allow by means of a light beam to capture the colors, shapes, lights and shadows of an image on a sheet of paper or other surface located on it, similar to a photocopier, converting the image into digital signals and from the computer screen, using special programs to make changes and adaptations to the image. There are scanners of varying sizes and better image conversion capabilities, but in essence they are very similar.

Printer

It is a device connected to a computer, capable of transferring the images or text observed on the computer screen to a sheet of paper, acetate, cardboard, etc. by printing them. With different technologies, methods and printing capacity (inkjet, laser, thermal, dot, etc.) and data transmission, there are a wide variety of them, but in the market they are usually identified for their speed and print quality. . They are used in different situations since if a large amount of data is required for revision, it is better to use a point one, which appeared in 1974 and cheaper than lasers, which appeared around 1984 (in black and white), which provide print quality. high, more for working with images and for the presentation of final documents.

Optical fiber

The optical fiber is a very fine thread, made of high-quality materials, which is responsible for transporting a tiny ray of light, each thread of these can transmit one of the elements that make up an image or sound quickly and completely, overcoming the existing transmission channels so far.

In 1970, the optical fiber was presented commercialized after the last advance achieved thanks to Donald Keck, Robert Maurer and Peter Schultz, who manufactured the first batch of optical fibers with the quality and dimension necessary to meet the communication needs of the moment.

This technological development officially arrived in Colombia in 1988, when the International Telecommunications Center was created in Barranquilla, whose function is to connect our country with the fiber optic cable located in Puerto Colombia.

The AI has no limits . If we already knew it well, prepare to see it improved and with more possibilities of applying it. The key will be to combine software, data and artificial intelligence, only then will it be possible to simplify decision-making. The vast majority of companies will not hesitate to apply it, since it assures them not to be left behind in the world of technology. Where can we see it? In the health, financial services, robotics, computing sectors ...

We have been talking about it for a while, but this technology represents a great revolution in all areas, both personal and professional. The vast majority of objects will be connected to the Internet , which will send and store information about how we are using them, at the same time that they will share data between them, in order to personalize them and make them easier to use. It will be helpful, for example, in logistics centers where it will be easy to check the available stock and know when to replace it.

Another technology that will also be talked about a lot in 2019 is biotechnology. With it, unimaginable things can be done, challenging what was believed impossible, such as: satisfying the world demand for food, fuel, animal nutrition ... We can see it applied in the pharmaceutical industry developing more effective and personalized drugs for each patient. And in the textile sector allowing the creation of smart fabrics.

These are just a few, but surely there will be many more that will leave us speechless and that will come to make things easier for us. And not only that, because with the arrival of new technologies, comes an inevitable consequence: new jobs. And that is why being at the forefront of technologies like these is the best strategy to prepare for new jobs that still belong to the future, but that could very soon be your present and your vocation.

If you are interested in any of these sectors and want to work with any of these new technologies, enter InfoJobs and discover our thousands of job offers. Get ready to be part of this technological revolution!

Every year new technologies come into our hands; When it comes to renewing the computer, mobile phone or other devices, or when we undergo a medical procedure, we are always benefiting from the latest advances that have hit the market. However, before we notice the advantages of these innovations, there is a long pre-development process in which technologies must demonstrate their potential and feasibility. We review here six technology areas in full swing that according to experts will be in focus today during this 2020.

SUPERCOMPUTERS TO MATCH THE HUMAN BRAIN

The world's most powerful supercomputers currently achieve a processing speed greater than petaflop, or a billion trillion floating point operations per second, depending on the parameter used to measure the power of these giants. Summit, located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), holds the current record with its 148.6 petaflops. But it will not be for long: the expected milestone to break the exaflop barrier, or a thousand petaflops, will come true this year in China, although it is not yet possible to specify in which specific place, since according to the magazine Science three institutions compete to start the first machine capable of exceeding the threshold of ex-scale supercomputing.

Other countries do not want to be left behind. The US Department of Energy has commissioned the construction of two exascale supercomputers, Aurora and Frontier , which are due to enter service in 2021. The European Union and Japan are working on their own projects. Beyond the increase in power, overcoming the exaflop frontier has significant implications, since these machines will equalize the neural processing capacity of the human brain, thus providing the final boost to initiatives such as the Human Brain Project .

MORE POWERFUL, CLEANER AND SAFER BATTERIES

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry distinguished John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries, the ingenuity that today powers our mobile phones from electric cars. But despite the fact that this technology developed in the 1980s is still fully in force today, researchers are searching for new portable power sources that overcome current limitations to provide greater autonomy and faster charging .

This could be the year of confirmation of the next step: solid-state lithium ion batteries, which replace the liquid or gel electrolyte with a solid one. It has been a field in development for years, but it has not yet taken off. According to Nature magazine , during the Tokyo Olympics the Toyota company will present a car powered by this system . Solid state batteries can store 2.5 times more energy, have a longer life and avoid toxic compounds and the risk of explosion than current ones. At the moment, its drawback is the high price.

PANSIES ON A CULTURE PLATE

The ability of stem cells to recreate any organ or tissue is the fundamental premise of regenerative medicine , a field that raises great therapeutic hopes for the coming decades. This new biotechnology has led in recent years to the production of organoids, tiny functional replicas of organs with a three-dimensional structure, about the size of a grain of rice. But when these organoids mimic the brain, an organ capable of thinking, the implications are understood to be much deeper and more complex.

The recent development of the mini-brains has been spectacular: the researchers have managed to make the neurons form connections capable of transmitting brain waves and to manufacture their own network of blood vessels , as occurs in the real brain. Now we are trying to create small robots controlled by biological mini-brains capable of executing simple computations. Brain organoid technology is likely to speak for itself this year, and not just because of its progress: Certain experts have likened the activity of mini-brains to a rudimentary way of thinking, thus alerting to the urgency of establishing ethical standards that regulate these research.

ENGINEERING AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE

As the climate crisis is the most pressing global problem of our time, it is natural that growing technological areas increasingly include efforts to combat this scourge or mitigate its effects. One of these newly minted fields is geoengineering against climate change . In 2020, the first small-scale experiments could be launched to test a controversial approach: is it possible to compensate for warming by artificially reducing the amount of solar radiation the Earth receives?

The controversy surrounding the possible benefits and harms of these projects has been delaying the start of the Controlled Stratospheric Disturbance Experiment (SCoPEx), led by Harvard University. The idea is to use a powered balloon to disperse an aerosol of calcium carbonate particles , a principle harmless material, in a small section of the sky , in order to partially shield the radiation from the sun. SCoPEx results, along with information gleaned from simulation models, could tip these investigations toward further progress or a dead end.

QUANTUM COMPUTERS TO DOMINATE THEM ALL

Quantum computing is undoubtedly one of the developing technological areas that year after year attracts the attention of experts and the media. But their inclusion in the list of the hottest technologies for 2020 is justified by the recent debate on quantum supremacy , the ability of these machines to run computations unavailable to conventional computers. Last October, researchers from Google and other institutions published a study claiming to have achieved this milestone , by processing in 200 seconds with their system an operation that would have taken the Summit supercomputer 10,000 years. However, those responsible for this machine contested the proclamation, explaining that a recalibration of Summitwould have completed the same task in just 2.5 days .

Regardless of the controversy, Google scientists' achievement has been compared to the pioneering flight of the Wright brothers and has rekindled the race among researchers to conquer the next milestones in quantum computing, making experts predict a prodigal year. in progress in this field.

HANDLE DEVICES WITH THE MIND

Despite the rapid progress of electronic devices in recent decades, there is something that has not changed since the first personal computers began to be sold in the 70s, and it is our way of relating to them: we continue to use our hands, which makes to these technologies in double digital, by the binary coding system and by the use of the fingers.

However, the active research field of brain-computer interfaces aims to free ourselves from this tyranny of the fingers to allow us to operate the devices with the orders of our minds . This technology was one of the trends highlighted at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020, held this January in Las Vegas. As an example, the French company NextMind presented a reader that is attached to the head and that allows you to change the television channels or move the characters of a video game by fixing your eyes on specific places on the screen. The jump still pending until controlling the devices with the thought guarantees that soon we will see new advances in this line.