what changes occurred in past decade?
Answers
During the past 10 years, that number has jumped to an average 306 a year. In the United States, an index of climate extremes — hot and cold, wet and dry — kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has jumped 30 percent from 1992 to 2013, not counting hurricanes, based on 10-year averages.
Explanation:
What changed? 3G networks introduced a new age of calling, texting, and internet connectivity for mobile devices. 4G offered 10x faster speed than 3G networks, increasing download speeds from 1.5 Mbit/s to 15 Mbit/s.1 For perspective, this reduced the download time for an 800MB movie from 5 hours to 43 seconds. This improvement made 4G a foundational technology for a range of mobile applications that pried users away from their desktops and let them stream music and videos, shop on e-commerce sites, and use social media, all on the go.
Industries that benefited: Smartphone manufacturers, social media, e-commerce, streaming media
Then and now stat: Daily time spent online on mobile devices increased from 32 minutes in 2011 to 132 minutes in 2019.
Social Media Brought Our Lives Online
What changed? In the age of desktop computers, social media was a log of what happened in the past – a collection of experiences uploaded after the fact. As social media shift to the smartphone, however, it became an instantaneous broadcast of life experiences. And it’s not just individuals using these platforms anymore, companies, news organizations, and governments leverage them to rapidly communicate information in real time. In amalgamating these different types of content, social media platforms became one-stop-shops for information, capturing users’ attention and occupying significant amounts of their time. Advertisers took notice and continued to pour spending across social media platforms and search engines: in 2019, digital advertising spending surpassed that of traditional advertising mediums like TV and radio.2
Industries that benefited: Social media, online search platforms
Then and now stat: The number of global social media users increased from 970 million people in 2010 to 2.96 billion in 2020.
The Dawn of Genomics and Precision Medicine
What changed? Precision medicine, also commonly referred to as personalized medicine, uses patients’ genetic information to determine the most suitable treatment option for illness and to proactively identify health risks. As genomic sequencing costs rapidly fell, computing power increased, and biotech research advanced, precision medicine transitioned from an idea to a reality. Developments like the CRISPR-Cas9 approach to gene-editing introduced new efficient and reliable ways to make precise, targeted changes to the genome of living cells. In practice, this means editing or removing portions of DNA that present health issues. In 2019, such technology showed promise in treating blood disorders like sickle-cell and other genetic conditions like muscular dystrophy. According to some, CRISPR technology could correct up to 89% of disease-causing genetic variations in the future.5
Industries that benefited: Biotechnology, gene editing, genetic diagnostics
Then and now stat: Since CRISPR-Cas9’s 2012 discovery, the genetic editing technology became an intensive research field as is evident by the upward trend of medical journals discussing Cas9.