The 2010s – A Decade in Tech

Think back to ten years ago: what phone you were using, where you got your music and movies from, what you did for fun and entertainment online… I guarantee that the scene in your mind plays out like an old reel of a vintage movie compared to how we do things today. In the world of smartphones and laptops, a year is said to feel like a decade in terms of improvements and features that are added. In that case, a decade in tech can be said to comprise of an eon of changes and technological revolutions. As the 2010s come to an end, let’s take a look at what the past decade will be known for in tech.

"There's no chance the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

- Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO (2007)

Rise of the Smartphone

The smartphone precedes the beginning of the decade, but not by much. Apple released its iPhone near the end of 2007, much to the scoffing of Steve Ballmer and Blackberry executives. Google’s first Android devices hit the market the following year. However, both the Android and iOS market share crossed Blackberry’s in 2011, marking the beginning of an era of capacitive touchscreen devices. Eventually, the number of major mobile operating systems dropped from four to three (with the disappearance of Blackberry) and then from three to two (with Microsoft releasing the last feature update to Windows Mobile in 2017). Today the idea of a phone with a physical qwerty keyboard or worse, a phone without a touchscreen, seems archaic. 

The rise of the smartphone also introduced a new word into our collective vocabulary: apps. 2010 was a time when the majority of people either didn’t understand what an app was or didn’t think it was particularly useful. Fast forward to today: after setting up a brand new Samsung Galaxy phone, the first time you try to send an SMS, the Messages app asks you for permission to be able to send and receive texts.

Permissions by various apps to access your information is a small indicator of a larger concept: privacy, something that came into sharp focus in the latter third of the decade. This was triggered by user data leaks from various companies such as Yahoo, Sony, and Uber. Combined with Cambridge Analytica’s meddling in electoral processes, this trend of private user data being mishandled drove large tech companies to take the vast amounts of collected data more seriously. The last three major iOS and Android version updates have been pushing privacy features to each end user. Arguably, Apple has had more success in this regard as Android adoption of the latest versions is still comparatively slow.

Social Media

No one actually knows who coined the term “social media”, but people have numerous ideas as to where the concept began. Some point to the dominance of Friendster and Myspace in the early 00s, but others are steadfast the idea was conceived in 1997 with the release of Six Degrees and AOL Instant Messenger. Setting aside technicalities though, we find that humans have wanted to keep up with each other ever since the internet was first created in 1969 and through the first email sent a couple of years after that. This human desire to follow and stay connected to each other’s lives is something that boomed in the 2010s. 

While the latter half of the 2000s was known as the time when Facebook killed off Myspace, the 2010s will be known for Instagram beginning to kill off everything else. There are a multitude of reasons behind Instagram’s popularity, but the primary one is simple: people are highly responsive to images. We instinctively prefer to react to visual information over digesting written words. This, combined with the rise of influencer marketing, has sent mobile-friendly apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok booming. While the appeal seems to be lost in the eyes of Gen X and Baby Boomers, a quick look at the largest age groups of the users will tell you that apps of this kind are the future.

The other highlight of this decade that social media is responsible for perpetuating is memes. Facebook’s ability to let users share, comment on, and react to posts increased its partnerships with sites that relied on community-generated memes like 9GAG and Cheezburger. If the 2000s was the era of funny email forwards, the 2010s was the decade of memes. While meme culture changed and morphed in different ways through the 10s, the basic concept remained the same: information was conveyed through satire and ironic imagery by the masses. What had begun as relatable jokes and conundrums faced by everyday individuals, soon turned into posts relevant to the current overall meta, often echoing political sentiment or social satire. Memes, it turns out, far from being a trivial characteristic of this decade, allowed us an entry point into thinking about community, solidarity, and deeper meaning across cultures. Studying them can teach us a lot about the ways norms are created and sustained. 

Death of Traditional Media

The past several decades were marked by evolution in audio and video formats. While video storage formats went from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray Disks, audio went from cassettes to CDs. It was common practice for one generation to improve upon and invent storage and compression methods that would render new media formats smaller and more portable.

With the rise of high-speed internet, however, physical disks got pushed aside to the confines of distant memory. Almost overnight it seemed that all content was being streamed. For audio, it was the easiest: the iPod generation of the 2000s found it convenient to switch over. While the appeal of a Walkman or iPod was that you could carry thousands of songs right in your pocket (credit to Steve Jobs for making that happen), the appeal of streaming was that you could play not thousands but millions of songs anywhere you wanted to – as long as you had data. Artists suddenly stopped caring about album sales, preferring to track unique streams instead. Reacting to this modernity, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) changed the very methodology by which albums are certified Gold and Platinum, changing the way track streams were being calculated.

Video quickly followed suit. The rise of Netflix affected the fundamental way that audiences watched televised content. Back in the 90s and early 00s, Netflix was unable to beat US video renting giant Blockbuster. Eventually their subscription business model for video renting, which was later applied to unlimited online streaming as well, won out. After Blockbuster declared bankruptcy in 2010, the ticker only pointed upward for Netflix. The company that had offered itself up for sale for a mere $50 Million in 2000, has a market capitalization of $145 Billion at the time of writing. More than 150 Million subscribers tune into Netflix daily today.

As if to close off the video disk media for good, Samsung announced in early 2019 that it would stop producing any more 4K Blu-ray players. 

Looking Ahead to the Next Decade

If 2030 feels like it’s a hundred years away, stop and think about how close 2010 feels like it was. As H.G. Wells said, “The Future is Now!” Looking ahead, we can expect the breaking-up of some aggregator sites. The best example is Netflix: popular alternatives are already emerging (Disney+, PrimeVideo, HBO Go, Apple TV, Hulu, etc.) with their own shows and other product offerings. We may also see something similar happening in the audio or games streaming sectors. Alternatives are also going to pop up in terms of mobile operating systems. Firms such as Huawei and Facebook are reportedly working on their own OSes to ease their reliance on Google and Apple. Google’s government-ordered trade ban on Huawei also signals what may be a Tech cold war between China and the West. China’s huge population presents itself as a lucrative market for any foreign tech company to enter, but government regulations and fear of privacy issues prevent smooth business dealings. While netizens on Chinese social media keep having their voices muted, social media companies in the West will continue to battle the spread of “fake news”. Stricter privacy laws will mean more companies will have to rewrite their terms and conditions for increased transparent engagement with customers.

Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom; there are many spectacular things to look forward to in the 20s. For starters, Artificial Intelligence will advance at breakneck speed. This will make way for tech to get better in everything from Siri in your pocket to self-driving cars in your garage. More efficient use of technology will mean transportation and infrastructure development will become cleaner. Ideally, there won’t be any more people in 2029 asking IF climate change is real, but how we can improve on and reverse some of the dreadful effects humans have had on the earth.

Cryptocurrency, or at least another form of non-government-backed money, will have another resurgence, as will a renewed interest in virtual reality. Scientists theorize that we’ll advance enough for human thought and ideas to live “forever” as computerized brains. But even before we get there, education and the internet will permeate even the most difficult to reach corners of the world. This would ease up access to information, open up rural entrepreneurship opportunities, and translate to greater gender equality.

Manfred Clynes coined the term “cyborg” in the 1960s. His definition of the word referred to beings that had both biological and artificial parts. The last ten years have definitely been exciting, with the all the advancements in tech translating to developments in the human condition. I believe we are evolving to co-exist with technology as it makes our lives better and more interesting. Here’s to the next ten!