New Technologies That Are Worth Waiting For In 2019

Things did not go well for the world’s technology scene in 2018. However, as it is under pressure from lawmakers and the general public, we have the right to believe that the year 2019 will see something remarkable coming up, at least to solve some of our pressing issues like privacy or screen addiction. Technologies have the power to change the world. You may not see much of a difference next year because everything takes time, but it can possibly be more enjoyable with new ways to do things being introduced.

A Secondary Phone To Help You Reduce Screen Time

The Palm Palm

The idea behind this itty bitty phone is that it will serve as something you use when you want to get away from your multi-functional phone. It can only be your secondary phone as you must have another full-blown phone to get this one.

This Palm Palm phone has fewer cool functions than a conventional handset device a typical person would use and a less tempting appearance to discourage you from looking at it for an extended period.

This might sound like a funny idea at first but it is certainly not the worst way to reduce screen time. An even better approach is to sell the phone by itself.

The Palm Palm can fit in your wallet and can run a fully functional Android OS. The camera cannot compare to a regular phone on the market, but this is the point, to create something so unattractive that makes you forget about it.

Privacy Is Now The Priority

The year 2018 reminds the public of how their personal information can be leaked to a third party without them knowing it, which raises concerns over users’ privacy online.

Apple is believed to take over an AI startup called Silk Labs that is privacy-conscious in November. The reason here is both companies share the same vision that data should be processed locally as much as possible and should not be shared in any way.

Purchasing Silk Labs could just be a step in a grander plan to help IoT devices protect your info better. However, the best part here is enterprises finally take privacy as something they have to care about and turn into one of their product’s advantages, not a law someone force on them.

Exciting as this piece of news can be, do not put your hope up just yet. Privacy concern is not something that can be done in just a year. Remember, big data is still the major player in tech.

Video Game Streaming

Assassin’s Creed

There is still room for improvement in video game streaming services like Sony’s PlayStation Now. Even for older games, they still have a hard time maintaining consistent frame rates. However, we have reasons to believe that next year things will be different.

Rumor has it that Google is planning to jump into the game-streaming industry as it encourages people to try Project Stream. You may think you are doing testing for free for a company that you know can definitely afford the cost, but this is also a chance to play Assassin’s Creed for free, so it is your choice to participate in this test or not. Staff members at Kotaku reported that the experience with it is pleasant despite the lousy internet connection and old-fashioned hardware. Nintendo in Japan has a similar effort when they also offer Assassin’s Creed as a streamable game on Switch.

This great big piece of news is welcomed as a game like Assassin’s Creed has been pushing PlayStation and Xbox One to their limit, but with cloud-based computing, their devices can still handle such big ass games for some time.

5G Technologies

Finger crossed for 5G

5G is not exactly a new idea this year. It has been around for quite some time, but no one has ever successfully created a network that is as good as expected. However, even if there were real 5G networks, we wouldn't have had any sufficient devices to support them yet.

What we can hope for is when it is finally out, we can be able to download a 2-hour long movie in less than 3 seconds wirelessly; and better yet, streaming at the speed of 10 billion frames per second.

Do not expect to have all of these things next year but with all mixed reality and self-driving cars that consume up bandwidth more than anything we know, 5G is the only way to go.

Yes, you can have a faster Internet but does it really make your life better?

Real-time Translation

Google Pixel Buds

The hope for real-time translation was ignited when Google offered its Pixel Buds earphones last year. That invention is supposed to translate speech with the help of Google Assistant. Unfortunately, Pixel Buds are a total flop, and the real-time translation is still something we desire.

However, Google, like any other tech giants, is moving at a speed of light to innovate, so we still have something to count on to hope for real-time translation.

A Better Workplace

Google employees stood up for themselves

For those who are ready to argue that this is not tech-related, anything that has the power to improve lives as the result of applying knowledge is counted as a tech actually.

2018 saw workers take steps to protect their rights and demand a friendlier workplace. They are stronger together, and that is still true for tech giants. They have been put up with unreasonable demands for so long, and now it is time to fight back.

Not all attempts will come to a win for workers, but some did. A prime example was when Facebook and Google agreed to address sexual harassment, or when Google decided to slow its Chinese search engine scheme.

New Internet

A new Internet

The Internet we are on now is getting worse day by day, and many of us believe that we should have a new and improved one. One of these people is Tim Berners-Lee who founded a startup called Inrupt. This company is working on a web where users have more control over what they share online. If you find the name familiar, he is known as the father of the World Wide Web.

Not all developers share a common way in which this new Internet will work, but the underlying idea is somewhat the same. What they are aiming at is minimizing the influence of tech giants and giving you every right to govern your data.

With this idea realized, you can even have a new economy where you can profit from what you are giving away for free right now.

You will not see this new Internet in 2019, but if things go as it does right now, the trend will gain momentum and take us closer to that desirable goal.

On the flip side, the bad guys in this current Internet might just migrate to the new world and come up with a more sophisticated way to manipulate.