Technology
Five Pieces of Tech Nostalgia That Shaped The Future
Although many of the devices listed below may be confined to your garages or dusty drawers, the influence they had on modern technology is pretty much unsurpassed.
Today’s infographic from Safe Company is a throwback to the 1980s and 1990s, making us nostalgic for the heyday of these popular gadgets.
Tech Goes Mobile
The gadgets of the 80s and 90s were all about taking existing technology and making it more enjoyable while on the go, rather than solely being useful in the home or office. Even if that meant devices that were “portable” in name only, it was a huge step forward.
Devices like the Game Boy, Walkman, early Nokia phones, and other mobile technologies helped lead engineers to solve the problems that would lay the ground for today’s “world in the palm of your hand”. Improving power consumption efficiency, developing new battery types, reducing size, creating screens that were readable in a variety of light conditions, and even opening up the demand for aftermarket accessories were among these advancements.
Broadening Media Access
The latter 20th century will be remembered for democratizing access to all kinds of information, both for work and for play. Technologies of the 90s set a precedent for the bite-sized span of modern digital attention. Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia suite allowed comprehensive keyword search before the optimization of online alternatives. Simply type a word, and get every piece of information related to it – without the need to purchase updated versions including new data each year. It sounds almost comical to tout these as features in the age of Google, but compare Encarta to the alternative: carrying around a set of Encyclopedias!
On the leisure side, the wildly faddish Tamagotchi feels like a forebear of 2010-era mobile games – cleverly designed to create a cycle of short, addictive bursts of play with a low cost of access. The ever beeping, cutesy reward loop of caring for your Tamagotchi may have annoyed a generation of parents, but it inspired a whole genre of bite-size digital entertainment.
Even the Walkman launched a new frontier of access to media through the creative possibilities of mixtape-making, bootlegging, and sharing tapes. I’m sure anyone who grew up in the 80s and 90s had a shoebox full of favorite tracks taped from radio and vinyl… or was that just me?
Old Tech, Lasting Impact
Though it is easy to downplay the quaint technologies that came nearly thirty years ago, we can’t ignore that its influence is in the DNA of the devices and digital interactions we encounter every day. Go back through your closets, dig out your Game Boy, and take a trip back in time to remember the curiosities and comforts of old-school tech!
Technology
Visualizing AI Patents by Country
See which countries have been granted the most AI patents each year, from 2012 to 2022.
Visualizing AI Patents by Country
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
This infographic shows the number of AI-related patents granted each year from 2010 to 2022 (latest data available). These figures come from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), accessed via Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index Report.
From this data, we can see that China first overtook the U.S. in 2013. Since then, the country has seen enormous growth in the number of AI patents granted each year.
Year | China | EU and UK | U.S. | RoW | Global Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2010 | 307 | 137 | 984 | 571 | 1,999 |
2011 | 516 | 129 | 980 | 581 | 2,206 |
2012 | 926 | 112 | 950 | 660 | 2,648 |
2013 | 1,035 | 91 | 970 | 627 | 2,723 |
2014 | 1,278 | 97 | 1,078 | 667 | 3,120 |
2015 | 1,721 | 110 | 1,135 | 539 | 3,505 |
2016 | 1,621 | 128 | 1,298 | 714 | 3,761 |
2017 | 2,428 | 144 | 1,489 | 1,075 | 5,136 |
2018 | 4,741 | 155 | 1,674 | 1,574 | 8,144 |
2019 | 9,530 | 322 | 3,211 | 2,720 | 15,783 |
2020 | 13,071 | 406 | 5,441 | 4,455 | 23,373 |
2021 | 21,907 | 623 | 8,219 | 7,519 | 38,268 |
2022 | 35,315 | 1,173 | 12,077 | 13,699 | 62,264 |
In 2022, China was granted more patents than every other country combined.
While this suggests that the country is very active in researching the field of artificial intelligence, it doesn’t necessarily mean that China is the farthest in terms of capability.
Key Facts About AI Patents
According to CSET, AI patents relate to mathematical relationships and algorithms, which are considered abstract ideas under patent law. They can also have different meaning, depending on where they are filed.
In the U.S., AI patenting is concentrated amongst large companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Google. On the other hand, AI patenting in China is more distributed across government organizations, universities, and tech firms (e.g. Tencent).
In terms of focus area, China’s patents are typically related to computer vision, a field of AI that enables computers and systems to interpret visual data and inputs. Meanwhile America’s efforts are more evenly distributed across research fields.
Learn More About AI From Visual Capitalist
If you want to see more data visualizations on artificial intelligence, check out this graphic that shows which job departments will be impacted by AI the most.
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