IT Essentials: Reasons to be cheerful
There are grounds for optimism about 2025
Hidden amongst the geopolitical and economic turmoil of 2024 were some technology developments which could turn out to be good news for us all.
It’s been quite the year, hasn’t it? If there’s one thing that 2024 has demonstrated, it’s that whilst change is inevitable, progress isn’t necessarily so. But in amongst the geopolitical and economic turmoil of 2024, there have been developments in technology which provide cause for optimism.
2024 has obviously been a huge year for AI development, not all of it universally welcomed. But like it or not AI is becoming part of all of our lives. Whilst it’s easy to assume a defensive crouch position against what is sometimes depicted as a tsunami of job losses, if we can turn over the more repetitive and mundane aspects of our work (and life admin) over to AI, leaving us freer to create, innovate and problem solve then so much the better.
AI is already being used in areas like medicine to deliver some genuinely positive outcomes like this virtual hospital pilot, and 2024 also gave us the first comprehensive legal framework for generative AI development.
AI is also being used to accelerate sustainability. It’s being used to reduce the impact of foundational industries, agriculture and enhance biodiversity.
In fact, for the sustainability tech nerds among us there has also been good news in 2024. There have been breakthroughs in solar cells that can make solar panels vastly more efficient at generating the power we all need, drilling innovations that mean we can access geothermal heat more easily, and considerable progress in thermal battery development.
Earlier this year a second supercomputer surpassed the exascale barrier, achieving over a quintillion calculations per second. Chiplet technology is also enabling much more efficient compute which ultimately means we can do more compute with less energy, as does the Blackwell GPU architecture unveiled by NVIDIA.
A breakthrough back in January with graphene semiconductors could bring faster, more efficient mobile computing as well as improvements to quantum computing.
Most of these developments have been under reported. In the attention economy, it’s bad news and bad takes that are rewarded. But we can choose a different path, as the ongoing migration of millions of people away from the sewer that is X, to the decidedly more pleasant digital realms of BlueSky and Threads shows.
2024 hasn’t been the easiest for the team at Computing. There have been technical challenges, bereavement and loss. But we end 2024 with gratitude for our subscribers. On behalf of the whole team, I’d like to thank you all for your engagement with us this year and for being such a clever, thoughtful and engaging audience.
We wish you all the joys of the festive season and the very best for 2025.