Top Tech Breakthroughs of 2008

As we approach the end of the year it's time once again for the never-ending stream of retrospectives and year-in-review discussions. Wired has their version of the best technology breakthroughs of 2008. From phones to shrinking laptops to flexible displays, there is no shortage of interesting advancements when looking back at this year. What other groundbreaking advancements were made this year, and what do we have to look forward to for 2009?

Comments

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Memristor loses out to the Apple App Store..

Wha-What?!!?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on the number of times Apple was unnecessarily mentioned in the article, I'm guessing they are a big advertiser with Wired.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on the number of times Apple was unnecessarily mentioned in the article, I'm guessing they are a big advertiser with Wired.

Don't underestimate the Fanboi Factor, either.

Re:WTF?

[Xerolooper]

And I love the statement (yes I rtfa)

Until this year, mobile app developers lacked an easy way to get their software into the hands of consumers, forcing them to make deals with finicky and power-hungry carriers if they wanted to get any distribution at all.

This as apposed to forcing them to make deals with a finicky and power-hungry hardware manufacturer.

Oh dear

[netsavior]

So lets see the advancements are:
Finally implementing a 37 year old technology
A website for buying programs - Apple App store
Actually using flash memory, a fairly old technology
a bathing suit
Actually using a 1978 technology - GPS
A slightly better consumer digital video camera
The third major revision of an old technology - USB 3.0
Microchips that are small
A cellphone operating system
and, presenting, the ONLY actual innovation of 2008

Flexible displays that barely work!

so glad I live in the age of technological miracles

Re:Oh dear

[Shadow of Eternity]

You forgot to mention that most things touted as breakthroughs over the last year won't be on the market for quite some time, and wont be affordable for quite some time after that.

Just look at E-paper, from what I understand it's not nearly as expensive as an equivalently sized LCD display and yet it costs considerably more to get an ebook reader which is for all intents and purposes nothing more than a giant palm pilot.

Re:Oh dear

[Albert Sandberg]

I don't know if the LHC should be accounted for this year, but if it missed the list, something is not right.

Re:Oh dear

[netsavior]

hah the irony of your fake mocking at my fake mocking is that I frequently bitch about streaming video :P

Streaming video is still broken! I have to "steal" movies off of bittorrent even with my 5mbps connection because Amazon onebox sucks, netflix streaming sucks. I don't give a whole hell of a damn about quality. I prefer non-HD content because I feel like the message of the movie(the plot not the special effects) is more important than the visual experience, and currently the variety of non-HD content is significantly greater than that of HD. I must admit though that I am guilty of downloading Sarah Connercles in HD format because their website is so broken that it cannot stream to my ubuntu machine (or linux is so broken that adobe refuses to keep Flash up to date or whatever). At any rate, We have all this wonderful streaming content bla bla bla, I still download files in full and then play them because streaming is still 98% unusable in my experience :P how is that for a self fulfiling rant prophecy?

Re:why look back

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us aren't newshounds who sit at the desk all day consuming every little bit of news. These lists sometimes contain items that may be of interest to those of us who don't have a thousand RSS feeds and continuously refresh the /. frontpage.

It's funny that the people who consume the most news seem to see themselves as more enlightened and somehow more willing to pass judgement on news stories.

Yet, if you read studies on propaganda (for instance, Ellul's book), it's always the other way round: the well-informed chattering classes are almost always the targets, and consumers, of propaganda. I can see the cognitive dissonance forming in /.'ers heads now ... "but, BUT, I'm well informed, I just couldn't be targetted by propaganda!"

not so much breakthroughs as commercial hits

[petes_PoV]

Most of the items listed have been around or known about for a long time.

The thing that made them a success in 2008 (except for USB 3 - which shouldn't be on the list as it's merely an administrative milestone, so far - wait until the real products become mainstream) was being adopted in popular products. Flash, GPS and swimwear aren't new. Flexible screens and memristors are valid entries - and the rest simply shouldn't be there.

There's innovation, just not in WIred

[Animats]

Part of the problem is Wired, or "Tired", which has turned into a sort of Sharper Image catalog. (Sharper Image itself is defunct.) Wired doesn't really have reporters any more; just "editors" and ad reps. Hence their product orientation.

More significant tech events this year include:

• Big Dog. At last, robust legged robots.
• Cheap "netbook" computers. The price point in laptops is dropping.
• Wind farms that are really big. The US has about 18 GW of installed wind capacity, more is going in at a rapid rate, and wind power companies are making money. At last, it's a serious source of power.
• The Tesla car, first delivered in 2008. Yes, it's overpriced, but for the first time, the range and performance are there.

Those are all more significant than anything in Wired's list.

There's probably good stuff in the bio field too, but I don't follow that.

Re:Solar Charged Laptops?

[Algan]

Umm, this is impractical on so many levels... Let's see, first of all, I tend to use my laptop opened with about 120 degrees between the display and the keyboard. That means the back of the display is facing slightly down, below the horizon. Even if somehow you manage to use it opened at a sharp angle, you will have to face the sun to have any kind of efficiency. Also, some people prefer to avoid prolonged exposure to the sun, and I presume most geeks fall into this category, which means most of them will use the device in the shade. Finally, I would be reluctant to leave my $2K machine out in the open to charge, which means I would have to keep an eye on it. Dunno about others but I don't find the idea of spending some hours watching a closed laptop charging in the sun too appealing... it sounds akin to watching grass grow.

Now, a better idea would be to have a separate solar panel module that you can unfold and plug into your laptop. This would address most of the above concerns. I'm not sure if it would score you points with the ladies, though...