2010s in science and technology explained

This article is a summary of the 2010s in science and technology.

Technology

See also: Timeline of computing 2010–2019. Big data and "Big Tech" saw an expansion in size and power in the 2010s, particularly FAANG corporations. The growing influence of "Big Tech" over cyberspace drew scrutiny and increased oversight from national governments. The G20 countries began closing tax loopholes[1] and the European Union began asserting legal guidelines over domains such as data privacy, copyright, and hate speech, the latter of which helped fuel a debate over tech censorship and free speech online, particularly deplatforming. Throughout the decade, the United States government increasingly scrutinized the tech industry, from attempted copyright regulations to threatening antitrust probes.[2] [3] Increased protectionism and attempts to regulate and localize the internet by national governments also raised fears of cyber-balkanization in the later half of the decade.[4] [5] [6]

Communications and electronics

Software

Automobiles and transportation

Space

Spaceflight became increasingly privatized, including crewed spaceflight. SpaceX captures a significant share of the commercial launch market with Falcon 9.[56] [57] Falcon 9 became the first rocket to land its booster propulsively for reuse, in 2019 most flights reused boosters. Several other companies started working on partially reusable rockets while SpaceX started development of a fully reusable rocket, Starship. Towards the end of the decade around 100 companies were developing rockets for the small satellite market,[58] some have made test flights and Rocketlab's Electron made multiple commercial flights.[59] The Space Shuttle was retired in 2011. SpaceX and Boeing developed commercial crewed spacecraft for orbital flights (SpaceX Dragon 2, Starliner), Dragon 2 made its first crewed flights in 2020. Blue Origin develops the crewed New Shepard for suborbital flights. Virgin Galactic develops a spacecraft for suborbital flights and performs first crewed flights. NASA Dawn probe was the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies,[60] the first spacecraft to visit either Vesta or Ceres, and the first to orbit a dwarf planet,[61] arriving at Ceres in March 2015, a few months before New Horizons flew by Pluto in July 2015.

Other notable developments in astronomy and spaceflight over the decade included:

Computing and artificial intelligence

Legal issues

Software development

Physics

Robotics and machine learning

Biology

Organisms

Genetics

Medicine

See also

Notes and References

  1. News: 9 June 2019. G20 agrees to wrap up Big Tech tax rules by 2020. Reuters.
  2. News: 5 June 2019. Big Tech was the heart of the bull market. Now it's under fire. CNN Business. 9 June 2019.
  3. News: 4 June 2019. The Coalition Out to Kill Tech as We Know It. The Atlantic. 9 June 2019.
  4. News: 10 December 2018. 2018 In Review: What Happened In The World Of Big Tech. NPR. 25 April 2019.
  5. News: 13 March 2019. The 'splinternet' is already here. Tech Crunch. 26 April 2019.
  6. News: 7 September 2018. Get ready for the "splinternet": The web might not be worldwide much longer. 26 April 2019.
  7. Paul McDougall. iPad Is Top Selling Tech Gadget Ever. InformationWeek. https://web.archive.org/web/20101208051812/http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/portable/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227700347. 8 December 2010. dead.
  8. News: Andrew. Owen. 28 August 2018. The History and Evolution of the Smartphone: 1992–2018. Text Request. 22 January 2019.
  9. News: Rigby. Bill. 19 April 2013. Microsoft multiyear license growth softens pain of PC decline. Reuters.
  10. News: Samsung overtakes Nokia in mobile phone shipments – BBC News. BBC News . 26 April 2012 . 24 June 2016. en-GB.
  11. News: Arthur. Charles. 3 February 2012. Netbooks plummet while tablets and smartphones soar, says Canalys. The Guardian. 29 August 2015.
  12. News: Svensson. Peter. 29 April 2013. Smartphones now outsell 'dumb' phones. Newshub.
  13. Web site: South Korea to seize on world's first full 5G network. Nikkei Asian Review.
  14. Web site: US dismisses South Korea's launch of world-first 5G network as 'stunt' – 5G – The Guardian. amp.theguardian.com.
  15. News: 30 May 2019. 5G: EE launches UK's next-generation mobile network. BBC News. 30 May 2019.
  16. Web site: website optimization on 2. 29 March 2011. Over 2 Billion Internet Users Worldwide – Wireless Broadband 30% Slower than Wired – March 2011 Bandwidth Report. 10 November 2011. Websiteoptimization.com.
  17. Web site: Florence Labedays. Mobile Broadband Users to Top One Billion Mark in 2011. dead. https://archive.today/20120716204553/http://nelsonphysicaltherapy.com/active-gaming/. 16 July 2012. Mobiledia.
  18. Web site: Newark. Charles. 20 June 2011. Mobile Apps Put the Web in Their Rear-view Mirror. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20111112162050/http://blog.flurry.com/bid/63907/Mobile-Apps-Put-the-Web-in-Their-Rear-view-Mirror. 12 November 2011. 10 November 2011. Blog.flurry.com.
  19. News: Maina. Antony. 6 June 2018. 20 Popular Social Media Sites Right Now. Small Business Trends. 21 January 2019.
  20. Web site: 10 Reasons Why Influencer Marketing is the Next Big Thing. 14 July 2015 . 19 July 2017.
  21. Web site: Hall. John. The Influencer Marketing Gold Rush Is Coming: Are You Prepared?. . 19 July 2017.
  22. News: Broida. Rick. 13 November 2013. How to rent movies now that Blockbuster is dead. CNET.
  23. Dan Nosowitz. The Internet Officially Runs Out of Addresses Today, But It's Not Cause for Panic. Popular Science.
  24. Web site: Matt Warman. 21 May 2012. Google Chrome beats Internet Explorer to become world's most popular web browser. 27 May 2012. The Telegraph.
  25. Web site: Dickinson. Boonsri. Paul Allen Invests in a Massive Project To Make Wikipedia Better. Business Insider.
  26. Rubin, Peter. (2014). Oculus Rift. Wired, 22(6), 78.
  27. News: McCue. TJ. 4 June 2018. Wohlers Report 2018: 3D Printer Industry Tops $7 Billion. Forbes. 21 January 2019.
  28. Web site: Global sales volume for true wireless hearables 2018-2020. Statista.
  29. Web site: Everything you need to know about wireless charging. Moshi.
  30. Web site: Smartwatch unit sales worldwide from 2014 to 2018 (in millions). 22 January 2019. Statista.
  31. Web site: Vincent. James. LG's latest ridiculous OLED screen is transparent, flexible, and taller than Tom Cruise. 23 January 2019. The Verge. 22 June 2017 .
  32. News: Archer. John. Curved TVs: The pros and cons for buying a curved TV in 2018. Trusted Reviews. 23 January 2019.
  33. Web site: Larsen. Rasmus. Samsung's 2014 TV line-up – with prices. 7 May 2019. FlatPanelsHD.
  34. Web site: Mark Hoelzel. 2 September 2014. 4K TV Shipments Are Ramping Up Much Faster Than HD TV Did in the Past. 24 November 2015. Business Insider.
  35. Web site: MIT's new 5-atom quantum computer could make today's encryption obsolete. 5 March 2016.
  36. Web site: The world's first 13TB SSD is here. 13 January 2016 . 10 February 2016.
  37. Web site: The world's first 13TB SSD is here. 10 February 2016.
  38. News: Köhn. Rüdiger. Online-Kriminalität: Konzerne verbünden sich gegen Hacker. Faz.net.
  39. Hsu. Chin-Lung. Lin. Judy Chuan-Chuan. 2016. An empirical examination of consumer adoption of Internet of Things services: Network externalities and concern for information privacy perspectives. Computers in Human Behavior. 62. 516–527. 10.1016/j.chb.2016.04.023.
  40. News: 2016. Why Deep Learning Is Suddenly Changing Your Life. Fortune. 13 April 2018.
  41. Web site: Klint Finley. 2 June 2011. GitHub Has Surpassed Sourceforge and Google Code in Popularity. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20120530022611/http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/06/github-has-passed-sourceforge.php. 30 May 2012. 26 May 2012. ReadWriteWeb.
  42. Web site: Oracle sues Google over Android and Java. 23 June 2016. CNET.
  43. Web site: 26 May 2016. Google beats Oracle—Android makes "fair use" of Java APIs. Arstechnica.
  44. News: Weisman. Jonathan. 20 January 2012. After an Online Firestorm, Congress Shelves Antipiracy Bills. The New York Times. 23 June 2016. 0362-4331.
  45. Web site: Cybercrime bill signed into law by Aquino – Newsbytes.ph | Infotech News. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20121015230516/http://www.interaksyon.com/infotech/cybercrime-bill-signed-into-law-by-aquino-newsbytes-ph. 15 October 2012. 4 October 2012. InterAksyon.com.
  46. News: Gupta. Anil. 28 February 2018. Drone Technology's Popularity and Regulatory Environment. Infospace. 22 January 2019.
  47. Web site: Bateman. Joshua. 1 September 2017. China drone maker DJI: Alone atop the unmanned skies. News Ledge.
  48. News: Jeff Cobb. 4 November 2015. GM Sells Its 100,000th Volt in October. HybridCars.com. 4 November 2015. About 102,000 units of the Volt/Ampera family have been sold worldwide by the end of October 2015.
  49. News: 8 May 2012. Google gets first self-driven car license in Nevada. Reuters. 24 June 2016.
  50. Web site: 19 March 2018. Uber's fatal self-driving crash: all the news and updates. 17 May 2018. The Verge.
  51. Web site: Ruddick. Graham. 23 September 2015. Volkswagen chief quits over emissions scandal as car industry faces crisis. 24 June 2016. The Guardian.
  52. Web site: 18 September 2015. Volkswagen under investigation over illegal software that masks emissions. 30 September 2015. The Guardian.
  53. News: 18 September 2015. EPA: Volkswagen used 'defeat device' to illegally skirt air-pollution controls. 30 September 2015. The Washington Post.
  54. Shaheen. Susan. Cohen. Adam. April 2016. Smartphone Applications to Influence Travel Choices: Practices and Policies. Dot/Fha. 90.
  55. Web site: Riga upgrades public transport services and rolling stock . Intelligent Transport . en.
  56. Web site: One Chart Shows How Much SpaceX Has Come to Dominate Rocket Launches. 13 July 2017.
  57. Web site: SpaceX is the No. 1 rocket company by revenue, with $2 billion last year, Jefferies estimates. . 20 May 2019.
  58. Web site: Clark . Stephen . Relativity Space obtains Air Force approval for Cape Canaveral launch pad . Spaceflight Now . 18 January 2019 . 24 January 2019.
  59. Web site: Completed missions. https://web.archive.org/web/20191206123651/https://www.rocketlabusa.com/missions/completed-missions/. dead. 6 December 2019. 6 December 2019.
  60. Now Appearing At a Dwarf Planet Near You: NASA's Dawn Mission to the Asteroid Belt . Marc . Rayman . Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures . Foothill College, Los Altos, CA . 8 April 2015 . 2018-07-07.
  61. Book: Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016. 2. Siddiqi. Asif A.. 2017059404. 9781626830424. NASA History Program Office. second. 2018. SP2018-4041. The NASA history series. Washington, DC.
  62. Web site: 4 August 2011. Salt Water May Flow on Mars. 15 July 2018. NASA.
  63. News: Amos. Jonathan. 11 October 2010. Obama signs Nasa up to new future – BBC News. en-GB. BBC News. 23 June 2016.
  64. Web site: 25 May 2012. SpaceX's Dragon Docks With Space Station—A First. https://web.archive.org/web/20120527095244/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/120525-spacex-dragon-robot-arm-international-space-station-nation/. dead. May 27, 2012. National Geographic.
  65. News: 6 August 2012. Mars rover landing miracle of engineering, scientists say. Reuters. 23 June 2016.
  66. News: Rincon. Paul. 14 December 2013. China lands Jade Rabbit robot rover on Moon – BBC News. en-GB. BBC News. 23 June 2016.
  67. Web site: Fischer. Daniel. 6 August 2014. Rendezvous with a crazy world. The Planetary Society.
  68. Web site: Northon. Karen. 12 November 2014. NASA's Orion Spacecraft Arrives at Launch Pad, Hoisted onto Rocket Ahead of its First Spaceflight. 23 June 2016.
  69. News: 6 March 2015. NASA Spacecraft Becomes First to Orbit a Dwarf Planet. NASA. 6 March 2015.
  70. News: 6 March 2015. Nasa's Dawn probe achieves orbit around Ceres. BBC. 6 March 2015.
  71. News: Evidence of liquid water found on Mars – BBC News. BBC News . 13 April 2015 . 23 June 2016. en-GB.
  72. Web site: Excite News – Pluto close-up: Spacecraft makes flyby of icy, mystery world. 23 June 2016. apnews.excite.com.
  73. Web site: 22 December 2015. SpaceX Makes History: Falcon 9 Launches, Lands Vertically. NBC News.
  74. News: Amos. Jonathan. 14 March 2016. Mars TGO probe despatched on methane investigation – BBC News. en-GB. BBC News. 24 June 2016.
  75. Web site: 5 July 2016. Juno probe enters into orbit around Jupiter. 5 July 2016. BBC.
  76. Web site: 26 July 2016. Solar Impulse completes historic round-the-world trip. 26 July 2016. BBC.
  77. News: Amos. Jonathan. 24 August 2016. Neighbouring star Proxima Centauri has Earth-sized planet. BBC News .
  78. Web site: 9 September 2016. NASA's OSIRIS-REx Speeds Toward Asteroid Rendezvous. 9 September 2016. NASA.
  79. News: 9 September 2016. Asteroid probe begins seven-year quest. BBC News. 9 September 2016.
  80. News: Yuhas. Alan. 6 February 2018. SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch: world's most powerful rocket blasts off – live. The Guardian. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20180206215645/https://www.theguardian.com/science/live/2018/feb/06/spacex-falcon-heavy-launch-elon-musk-live-updates. 6 February 2018.
  81. Web site: Wall. Mike. October 30. Space com Senior Writer. ET. 2018 03:10pm. RIP, Kepler: NASA's Revolutionary Planet-Hunting Telescope Runs Out of Fuel. Space.com. 30 October 2018 .
  82. Web site: NASA's Dawn Mission to Asteroid Belt Comes to End. NASA/JPL.
  83. News: Moss. Trefor. 3 January 2019. China Lands Probe on the 'Dark Side' of the Moon. The Wall Street Journal. 3 January 2019.
  84. Web site: Ryan. Jackson. 13 February 2019. NASA's history-making Mars rover Opportunity declared dead. 14 February 2019. CNET.
  85. Grossman. Lisa. Conover. Emily. 10 April 2019. The first picture of a black hole opens a new era of astrophysics. Science News. 11 April 2019.
  86. Web site: ITU – Statistics. 9 December 2019.
  87. Web site: Number of smartphones sold to end users worldwide from 2007 to 2020. 9 December 2019.
  88. Web site: Smartphones, streaming & social media: Tech that shaped us in the 2010s. 4 December 2019.
  89. Web site: Journey – Waymo.
  90. Web site: Say hello to Waymo . . 13 December 2016 . 2019-12-05 . 2019-12-30 . https://web.archive.org/web/20191230224137/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHbMt6WDhQ8 . live .
  91. Web site: Google Confirms First Ever Driverless Self-Driving Car Ride . Debbie . Encalada . Complex Media . December 14, 2016.
  92. Web site: Google Chrome beats Internet Explorer to become world's most popular web browser. Telegraph. Matt Warman. 27 May 2012. 21 May 2012.
  93. Web site: A New Law to Describe Quantum Computing's Rise?. Quanta Magazine. June 18, 2019 . Hartnett . Kevin.
  94. Web site: Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor. 23 October 2019. 23 October 2019.
  95. Web site: Google claims 'quantum supremacy' for computer. 23 October 2019. 23 October 2019. BBC News.
  96. Hello quantum world! Google publishes landmark quantum supremacy claim. 23 October 2019. Nature. 574. 7779. 461–462. 10.1038/d41586-019-03213-z. 31645740. Gibney. Elizabeth. 2019Natur.574..461G. free.
  97. Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor. 23 October 2019. Nature. 574. 7779. 505–510. 10.1038/s41586-019-1666-5. 1910.11333. 31645734. Arute. Frank. Arya. Kunal. 1. 2019Natur.574..505A. free.
  98. Web site: On "Quantum Supremacy". 21 October 2019. 23 October 2019. IBM.
  99. Web site: Rachel Metz. How AI came to rule our lives over the last decade. 2020-11-17. CNN. 21 December 2019 .
  100. AlphaGo's Designers Explore New AI After Winning Big in China. en-us. Wired. 2020-11-17. 1059-1028.
  101. News: Oracle sues Google over Android . Reuters . August 13, 2010 . June 1, 2012 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150112215632/http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/13/us-google-oracle-android-lawsuit-idUKTRE67B5G720100813 . January 12, 2015 .
  102. Web site: Oracle sues Google over Android and Java . Tom . Krazit . August 13, 2010 . March 28, 2018 . .
  103. Web site: ReadWriteWeb. 26 May 2012. 2 Jun 2011. Klint Finley. GitHub Has Surpassed Sourceforge and Google Code in Popularity. https://web.archive.org/web/20120530022611/http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/06/github-has-passed-sourceforge.php. 2012-05-30. dead.
  104. Web site: Git User's Survey 2009. 2012-05-26. 2018-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20180221162111/https://survs.com/WO/WebObjects/Survs.woa/wa/shareResults?survey=2PIMZGU0&rndm=678J66QRA2. dead.
  105. Web site: O'Luanaigh . C. . 14 March 2013 . New results indicate that new particle is a Higgs boson . CERN . 2013-10-09.
  106. Media and Press relations . LHC experiments delve deeper into precision. 11 July 2017 . CERN . 2017-07-23.
  107. Web site: Gravitational Waves Detected 100 Years After Einstein's Prediction . LIGO . 11 February 2016 . 13 February 2016.
  108. Abbott, B.P. . Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger . . 116 . 6 . 061102 . 2016 . 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102 . etal. 2016PhRvL.116f1102A . 26918975. 1602.03837. 119286014 .
  109. https://techxplore.com/news/2019-12-intelligent-tank-automatically-year.html Intelligent tow tank automatically carries out 100,000 experiments in just one year
  110. News: Cyborg organoids offer rare view into early stages of development . 8 August 2019 . Harvard. 12 August 2019 .
  111. Hoshika . Shuichi . etal . Hachimoji DNA and RNA: A genetic system with eight building blocks (paywall) . 22 February 2019 . . 363 . 6429 . 884–887 . 10.1126/science.aat0971 . 30792304 . 6413494 . 2019Sci...363..884H .
  112. News: Zimmer . Carl . Carl Zimmer . DNA Gets a New and Bigger Genetic Alphabet . 21 February 2019 . . 21 February 2019 .
  113. News: Belluz . Julia . CRISPR babies: the Chinese government may have known more than it let on . 4 March 2019 . . 6 March 2019 .
  114. News: Regalado . Antonio . China's CRISPR twins might have had their brains inadvertently enhanced . 21 February 2019 . . 21 February 2019 .
  115. News: Engineers create an inhalable form of messenger RNA. 4 January 2019 . MIT News . 9 January 2019 .
  116. News: University of Warwick . Simply shining light on dinosaur metal compound kills cancer cells . 3 February 2019 . . 3 February 2019 . University of Warwick .
  117. Zhang, Pingyu. et al . Nucleus-Targeted Organoiridium–Albumin Conjugate for Photodynamic Cancer Therapy . 15 December 2018 . . 58 . 8 . 2350–2354 . 10.1002/anie.201813002 . 30552796 . 6468315 .