{"id":1178,"date":"2020-12-15T09:10:28","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T09:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1178"},"modified":"2020-12-15T09:10:29","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T09:10:29","slug":"what-an-amazing-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/12\/15\/what-an-amazing-year\/","title":{"rendered":"What an amazing year!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image by Syaibatul Hamdi from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2020 will go into the annals of history as the year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many people have seen their lives disrupted, gotten sick or worse and suffered from mental health issues due to isolation and loneliness. All the mayhem caused by the pandemic, though, easily makes us lose sight of all the good things that happened this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first, most obvious, one is the fact that the digital \ntransformation of industry and society took a step function improvement.\n We\u2019re all much, much better at conducting our work online and even if \nmany of us would really want to travel more and meet people in real life\n (and actually shake hands or hug), we\u2019re getting things done. Teams and\n individuals that were convinced that they needed to be onsite and in \neach other\u2019s face to be able to do their job are now operating remotely \nand working from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the advantages is, of course, that the environment is doing \nbetter as air pollution levels are lower in many parts of the world. \nThis is especially advantageous in areas that have snow in winter, as \nthe whiter snow reflects more sunlight. Also, there are several reports \nof improved water quality in rivers and lakes. The reduction in carbon \nemissions and pollutants, according to a Wikipedia article<\/a>, saved 77,000 lives over two months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science and technology research is continuing to deliver great results. In the sunniest parts of the world, the cost of solar electricity<\/a>\n is now below the cost of fossil fuels. This a decade or even decades \nahead of earlier predictions. And of course, we\u2019re not done. The \nimprovements in solar are just continuing, driving down prices even \nfurther to the point that electricity will become close to free, \naccording to some predictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, a recent article in Nature<\/a>\n describes how the use of a deep-learning program by Google\u2019s Deepmind \nsolved protein folding in biology. A problem that for decades proved to \nbe incredibly difficult to tackle by traditional algorithms was finally \ncracked by AI. And this is just one of the main benefits that AI is \nbringing to humankind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something that never ceases to amaze me is how quickly we were able to develop vaccines for Covid-19. This article<\/a>\n shows a timeline starting with the genetic sequence of the virus being \nreleased by the Chinese authorities early this year and nine months \nlater, there\u2019s a vaccine (in fact, multiple!) available with mass \ndistribution starting early next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a space nerd, I was incredibly excited to see SpaceX sending people into space again<\/a>.\n After the space race in the 1960s, interest in space took a nosedive, \nbut I\u2019m one of those that believe humans need to get off this planet and\n spread through the solar system and the universe. A catastrophic event \non this planet won\u2019t mean the end of humankind if we have people out \nthere. To build up a space industry and capability, the first step is to\n have reliable and cost-effective rockets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other news that just blew me away this year is that scientists have now managed to reverse aging<\/a>\n in cells, specifically in optic nerves and restoring sight in aging \nmice. Peter Thiel famously said: \u201cYour mind is software. Program it. \nYour body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it. Extinction\n is approaching. Fight it.\u201d It looks like we\u2019re on track to actually \nrealize cell rejuvenation in bodies for real and if not abolish then at \nleast delay death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my posts, I occasionally comment on the apocaholics in our society (and on the interwebs) who loudly claim that the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. This is both factually incorrect and, in my opinion, morally wrong as it encourages a victim mindset. Humankind is incredible and has an amazing capability to respond to challenges put in front of it and overcome these. If nothing else, the year 2020 showed, once again, the value of science and technology, the creativity of humans as a species and that, despite everything life throws in our way, we still manage to improve things. I hope you spend Christmas celebrating our combined accomplishments and that you start the new year focusing your energy on what you\u2019re going to do to contribute. Merry Christmas!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This blog will take a few weeks of vacation and will be back in the week of January 11.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>), Medium<\/a> or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2020 will go into the annals of history as the year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many people have seen their lives disrupted, gotten sick or worse and suffered from mental health issues due to isolation and loneliness. All the mayhem caused by the pandemic, though, easily makes us lose sight of all the good things … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1180,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions\/1180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}