Looking back: Science and technology in 2018

This year proved to be mercurial for science and technology. While space and medicine continued to be the sites of pathbreaking research, Big Tech and the business of running it proved to be a thorn in the path of scientific progress. Here’s a recap of significant events that occurred in the fields of science and technology in 2018:

Big Tech grows a partial, neoliberal conscience

2018 marked the second consecutive year in which technological firms, or at least the public perception of Big Tech, grew a conscience. The year was marked by protests—both from employees at the Big Tech, and by the public at large against the priority given to bottom lines over human rights. The biggest realisation was perhaps that technology and its producers were not politically neutral, and users had to responsibly use social media platforms.

Concerns over surveillance, privacy, and national sovereignty led to US Senate hearings of Mark Zuckerberg (over the Cambridge Analytica exposé) and Sundar Pichai, while Google employees across the world staged walkouts to protest against Google’s dismal sexual harassment policies. Google employees protested against plans to introduce a censored version of Google in China. Pichai clarified in a testimony before the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee that Google had no plans to launch censored search engine in China. Facebook’s problems continued to worsen as, in addition to everything else, it was also accused of having a diversity problem.

Despite these realisations, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey failed to learn a lesson and continued to publish tone-deaf tweets about Myanmar.

Data remained the new oil that was frequently stolen and compromised. A data leak proved to be the final nail in Google+’s coffin and Marriott International became the latest high-profile victim.

Business side of technology

India’s technological landscape underwent some major changes. Walmart acquired a majority stake in Flipkart early in the year. Despite promises to not change the management, the company’s management saw significant upheaval in the following months. Binny Bansal, Flipkart’s erstwhile CEO, resigned amidst an investigation into his personal conduct. Other significant changes in the upper management also occurred.

WhatsApp appointed Abhijit Bose as the head of its India operations where he will lead the company’s first full country team outside of California. Apple appointed Nokia’s Chief Customer Operations Officer (CCOO) Ashish Chowdhary as its new India operations head. Former Oracle executive Thomas Kurian will replace Diane Greene as the new CEO of Google Cloud starting January 2019.

Spotify, Bumble, Blade and other popular apps either launched in India or announced their decision to do so. Google also announced the nation-wide release of Neighbourly, its India exclusive app that sources information from users’ neighbours.

Apple became the first company to cross the $1 trillion valuation and was soon, in a surprising development, surpassed by Microsoft.

The Bitcoin bubble burst explosively after a few months of reaching $20,000 in 2017. It now trades under $4,000. Other cryptocurrencies also saw their bubbles burst and are now trading at less than 90% of their rate in January 2018.

Space proved to be a source of hope

Space became the space (pun intended) for some heartening developments. Indian Prime Minister Modi vowed to send a manned spaceflight by 2022, for which the cabinet set aside Rs 10,000 crore. ISRO continued its stellar work as it successfully launched India’s heaviest communication satellite GSAT-11. ISRO also launched PSLV-C43 with its earth observation satellite and 30 foreign satellites. It placed another communication satellite in orbit using India’s heaviest rocket, nicknamed Baahubali.

Scientists at NASA discovered the farthest known galaxy. In March, SpaceX successfully launched its sixth Falcon 9 rocket which deployed 10 Iridium (IRDM) communication satellites. Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Anton Shkaplerov sset a new spacewalking record of 8 hours and 13 minutes in February. NASA also discovered the darkest celestial body ever found. NASA’s Voyager 2 became the second spacecraft in history to reach interstellar space. NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft reached an asteroid that could collide with Earth 166 years from now.

Existential threat of climate change worsens

Climate change, however, remained a polarising issue, especially as the US pulled out of Paris Agreement under the tumultuous and environmentally irresponsible leadership of Donald Trump. Even as all G20 member nations signed a joint agreement on climate change in Argentina, Trump refused to do so. World leaders met in Poland for the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) to discuss how the Paris Agreement would be implemented so as to mitigate the effect of climate change, and to curtail the rising global temperatures.

Air pollution continued to remain a major problem in the largest cities of India and China. Both nations came up with innovative solutions to protect their citizens without targeting the systemic causes of worsening air quality. China developed the world’s largest air purifier to battle smog. Start-ups in India developed “Nasofilters” to trap microscopic pollutants with diameters between 2.5 and 10 micrometres, and a device that use radio waves to scatter pollutants with diameters between 2.5 and 10 micrometres, nitrogen oxide, and sulphur dioxide

Progress in natural and medical sciences

In a paradigmatic shift that’s bound to change how natural sciences, especially physics and chemistry, are studied, the kilogram was redefined.

Cancer research was marked by significant steps. The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to scientists studying the immune system’s potential in the battle against cancer. A new test that can detect cancer cells within minutes was developed by researchers at Unviersity of Queensland.

In a first, in Brazil, a baby was born from a womb that had been transplanted from a deceased donor. In another first, a robot was successfully used to extract a rare tumour from a patient’s neck in a surgery led by an Indian-origin surgeon.

Ethical conundrums in medicine

In February 2018, United Kingdom’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority approved the so-called three-parent baby and raised ethical concerns. In December, a Chinese scientist claimed that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies. Both these developments led to significant debates and discussions in the scientific and medical communities about ethics.

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Aditi Agrawal is a senior sub editor at Qrius