3 Exciting Tech Developments That Aren't AI

AI is rightfully the darling of the tech world at the moment. I work for an AI company and am incredibly excited and optimistic about the future that AI can help humanity build. But my word, do people talk about it a lot?!

Scanning 300+ of the top B2B tech sites, I found that AI was by far the most used buzzword of them all, highlighting just how how much this paradigm-shifting technology is already being touted by our best-in-class..

But tech is a wide, crazy world, and with the recent slowdown in the power of the AI models whilst we wait for more compute, I thought we would check out some other developments in the tech world that maybe aren’t getting as much attention as AI.

Quantum computing

You may or may not be aware that computers work by converting coding languages and data down into a binary language, meaning everything can be defined by a series of 1s and 0s, known as ‘bits’. For example, my name is 01101101 01100001 01110100 01110100 00100000 01100010 01110010 01101001 01110011 01110100 01101111 01110111 in binary (if you want to try converting your own name to binary, you can do so at the following translator).

You may or may not also be aware that certain particles in real-world physics can be in two places at once (I am led to believe it is actually more complex than this but we persist as I didn’t go to school for that because they wouldn’t let me in despite my repeated pleading and threats of violence). 

Quantum computing is taking this principle of ‘quantum superposition’ (being in two places at once) and applying it to computer science, allowing computers to use ‘qubits’ which are manipulated with lasers instead of the traditionally used ‘bits’. These ‘qubits’  can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously, allowing for infinitely more powerful computation. 

Imagine for a second a picture of a cat is represented by 1000 bits, but can be represented by 50 qubits. That means with the same amount of power, a quantum computer can generate 20x the amount of cat pictures than a normal computer, whilst also generating dog pictures and cow pictures (due to the superposition of the qubits meaning it can be multiple things at once). This is a massive leap forward for computational power as a whole, and will completely redefine how ‘computing’ is used by humanity moving forwards. But how is it practically being used currently?

Instead of using a quantum computer to generate pictures of animals (missed opportunity in my eyes), Google recently used a quantum chip to solve a maths problem. That doesn’t sound very impressive does it? Well when you consider this particular problem would have taken our most powerful computers 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to complete, you can start to grasp the impact of quantum superposition. 

Currently, quantum computers are incredibly good at specific tasks, like the above math problem, and can’t be used as generalists. They also have to be maintained in incredibly specific conditions to maintain superposition and are prone to accidents because of this. But once this is stabilised, the idea is that these quantum chips will be put into a computer in the same way traditional silicon chips are, to massively level up specific functions our computers can complete, and usher in a new era of computing that will be akin to the invention of the Internet. 

Wearable extended reality

What’s better than an enemies-to-lovers story?

An enemies-to-lovers story where the participant’s are massive, faceless, public multinational corporations of course!

That’s why the world officially caught the love bug when Google announced they would be partnering with Samsung (these companies have been battling for years over the right to create ‘not the iPhone’) for an ‘extended reality’ project. 

Adding Qualcomm in to make it a very Gen Z throuple, Google provided the AI (via their Gemini model) and Samsung provided the headset, for a piece of wearable technology called Android XR, supposedly the next big breakthrough in wearable technology which will be released in 2025.

I checked out a Daily Tech News podcast review, and one of the biggest takeaways was that these headsets, once widespread, could completely erase the human phenomenon of ‘forgetting’.

Hear me out.

Having an autonomous agent with ‘memory’ attached to your visual feed (what you see on a day to day basis) essentially will provide you with a complete failsafe. 

Imagine you are on your way to the airport for a holiday and shock of all shocks, you can’t remember if you turned the stove off. Currently, without some sort of smart home device, you basically have to suck it up and let it manifest in being overly snippy to your tapas waiter, but with wearable AI powered glasses, you’ll just be able to ask your AI companion to confirm if it ‘remembers’ you turning it off. It will then check it’s memory, confirm if you turned it off, or if not, it can instantly draft an email to your neighbour or loved one to check in and turn it off for you.

You’ll also be able to get real time directions, translate any text or audio in real-time (so language barriers will be massively minimised if not removed) and instantly search for information about anything you see!

How cool is that?! Never forgetting anything again?! It’s the stuff of pure sci-fi, and something I cannot wait to get my hands on.

The Fediverse

Ever found yourself in a moment of quiet contemplation, meditating amongst the beauty and solitude of nature, and contemplating : man, emails are really cool.

Well, I have! 

We take it a bit for granted, but emails are a really powerful technology, and you know what’s really special? Email is an open protocol. This means that if you have a Gmail account but your buddy has a Hotmail account, they both operate on the same protocol, meaning your Gmail account can send an email to their Hotmail account, absolutely no problem. This open protocol turned email into a powerhouse communication network that handles 300 billion emails in a single day.

A large part of the reason email is an open protocol is that it was invented a long time ago, before tech giants began creating things known as ‘walled gardens’. 

Nowadays, if you have a Facebook account and your buddy has a SnapChat account, there’s no way to pass data between these two ‘walled gardens’ as you can with email, as it benefits the company that own these platforms to keep your data siloed so they can make money from advertising more easily. To combat this, tech giants try to concentrate users within their own network, instead of opening the network to interact with other platforms. 

However, there is change in the air.

The ‘Fediverse’ is a movement that has sprung up around this very problem, aimed at creating an open protocol for social media that would allow data to be passed between different platforms operating on this protocol.

Imagine you have a protocol called MattMedia, that defines how data must be stored, shared and uploaded, so that any platform can interact with it. 

You could then build a YouTube clone that operates on MattMedia, that only pulls in video from the MattMedia protocol, and a Twitter clone, that only pulls in text media, but with the ability to access the data from the YouTube clone. 

If your Twitter clone spirals out of control and you start getting overloaded with trolls but don’t want to trample on ‘free speech’, you could create another Twitter clone, that only pulls in data from MattMedia that fits your content moderation policies.

Or, say you have written a blog, and want to post it on social media to drive traffic. Currently you need to individually post it across a bunch of different platforms. Using our email example, it would be like having to individually email it to all Gmail addresses, and then emailing it to all Hotmail addresses. Nightmare. But with the Fediverse you would be able to easily post this to the network in one go, maximising reach and traffic whilst minimising legwork. It would also be present on any new platforms that arise, meaning you don’t have to go through the headache of starting from scratch every time a new platform is released.

The Fediverse isn’t actually a new idea, it’s based on the core principles of how the Internet should work. It’s only gained steam recently as the fragility and opacity of our biggest social networks has been highlighted by things like Elon’s takeover of Twitter and the potential banning of TikTok. 

With a Fediverse based platform, users wouldn’t have to migrate from Twitter to Bluesky and start again. You could simply build a new platform off the protocol, and users could migrate all their data (in this case tweets and followers and connections) to this new platform, with no data loss.

It seems radical, but always remember, it’s exactly how the Internet is supposed to work. For more information, check out ActivityPub, which is the largest Fediverse protocol currently out there, and probably the front runner for making the Fediverse a real thing.