The last ten years were really amazing for the tech-savvy people and gamers (it’s usually the same person anyway). During the past decade, we’ve seen so many promising inventions, so may revolutionary technologies, so many unnecessary gadgets, that a list like this was bound to be made sooner than later.
From virtual reality headsets to lab-grown meat – we’ve seen them all, and now it’s time to fire off the top 8 most innovative products of the 2010s’!
1. Virtual Reality
Companies like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and their Chinese competitors, the last five years, were quite fruitful in the VR department. You can use these goggles to play games, experience crazy adventures, but most importantly, these devices are used for the nasty stuff I can’t mention here because the Big Brother will get angry. But you all know what I’m talking about. And that “thing” is the only reason VR is doing so well.
2. Smart Watches
Where did all those smart watches come from? The road was long and twisty, but one day we finally got a Messiah – Pebble smart watch. I was one of the people who backed Pebble on Kickstarter, and I gotta say, for $50, I got my price’s worth. Sure, it wasn’t the Apple Watch, but the concept was there, all Apple engineers had to do is improve it. Which took them years!
3. Drones
You know a gadget becomes popular when half of the Asian countries start making millions of its knockoffs. Drones really “took off” (get it?) sometime around 2010-2011. That’s when they’ve been turned into affordable toys. Nowadays, you can but a tiny little flying drone for as low as 5-10 bucks! And have you seen those breathtaking drone races and synced aerial dances? Those are wild!
4. CRISPR
Have you heard of this CRISPR technology? It stands for “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats” and is used to edit genes. How cool is that? In 2013 scientists successfully edited a eukaryotic cell, which forever altered our understanding of biology and our DNA.
5. Lab-Grown Meat
If we can eat meat without killing the animals, I’m all for it, and you should be too. The technology is here, all we need to do is figure out a few odd issues here and there. Maybe in a few decades we’ll all be eating 3D-printed fake burgers while petting the cows in the backyard…
6. Self-driving cars
Do you know why there are traffic jams on the roads? Human factor. Remove it, fully automate the cars, and you’ll see how efficient commuting can be. Of course, the past decade was just the beginning of this adventure, and we still need to figure out a lot of questions and possible issues before the AI cars are deemed safe to use.
7. 3D Bioprinting
Organs transplantation is not a fun game to play. Year after year, thousands of patients die without getting that new heart, liver, or kidneys. This is where 3D bioprinting comes in. Scientists have made considerable strides in this direction and were able to synthesize various types of human tissue cells.
8. Teleportation
Japanese physicist Masahiro Hotta was able to move an energy molecule from one point in space to another. It’s tough for me to understand this process from a scientific perspective. Still, these entangled particles don’t care about distance and can be transported to the other side of the Universe to Alpha Centauri in an instant. Not if, but when this technology is adequately developed, human and cargo teleportation will become possible!
