By Jane Wakefield
Technology reporter
2021 launched us to tech phrases together with Metaverse and NFT (non-fungible token).
Facebook took a dramatic new course, heading off into digital actuality.
The web, which had held up remarkably properly over a collection of lockdowns, skilled just a few wobbles.
And we discovered that these chips in all our gadgets, which we take as a right, weren’t infinite.
Here’s our rundown of a number of the greatest tales on the BBC Technology web site over the previous yr.
January: Winter of disconnect
Image supply, Getty Images
Even although he misplaced the presidential election on the finish of 2020, Donald Trump continued to make headlines into 2021.
The tweet that led to the ban was seen as significantly inflammatory given the storming of the Capitol constructing simply the day earlier than.
The occasions acted as a wake-up name to social media networks which had beforehand allowed politicians to have, roughly, free rein posting on-line.
During the course of the yr each Facebook and Twitter adopted new guidelines on the best way to cope with the high-profile accounts of world leaders and politicians.
Of course it was not the final we heard from Mr Trump – however extra on that later.
February: What’s up with WhatsApp?
Facebook insisted the adjustments didn’t mark a dramatic shift, however admitted that communication had been poor.
Privacy advocates stated it merely highlighted that WhatsApp was already harvesting big quantities of knowledge for its father or mother agency.
A couple of days after the backlash was reported within the media, WhatsApp revealed that those that didn’t settle for its up to date phrases and circumstances can be unable to obtain or ship messages after the 15 May deadline.
Later within the yr, WhatsApp was pressured to rewrite its privateness coverage following a £190m high-quality imposed by the Irish knowledge safety authority. It subsequently had to supply rather more details about what precisely it does with person info.
March: McAfee charged
Image supply, Reuters
In Spring, anti-virus creator John McAfee, who has all the time been a controversial determine, was charged with fraud – accused of selling crypto-currencies on Twitter in an effort to inflate the worth.
At the time, he was already being detained in Spain on separate costs referring to tax evasion.
April: Hold the chips
Image supply, Getty ImagesImage caption,
Computer chips vegetation are working flat out
It has been a yr dominated by chip shortages – the results of a mixture of things, together with the pandemic and the sharp enhance in demand for sure items as everybody tailored to working, studying and socialising at residence.
In April, Cisco turned one of many first to warn that the pc chip scarcity was an issue, though its suggestion that it would final for six months proved to be somewhat optimistic.
May: return of Trump?
Some identified that it appeared to be little greater than a glorified 1990-style weblog – and only a month later it was shut down.
It has raised $1bn to this point, however has additionally courted controversy and is going through an investigation from the SEC.
June: the web beneath pressure
Similar issues plagued Amazon Web Services, Akamai and Cloudflare throughout the yr, prompting some to query the reliance on a handful of corporations to maintain the web working.
July: goodbye to Jeff
Image supply, Reuters
One of Silicon Valley’s unique innovators, Jeff Bezos, stepped down from Amazon, precisely 27 years after he based the web retail large. For many he was a enterprise visionary, and the corporate he began bears this out – price $1.8trn on the time of his departure.
But like all tech giants, Amazon is going through elevated scrutiny, over the way it treats its warehouse staff, for instance, in addition to questions over whether or not it monopolises on-line retail.
Mr Bezos is not planning to stroll out of the limelight nevertheless. His newest obsession is Space – in October he and Star Trek’s unique Captain Kirk, aka William Shatner, blasted into sub-orbit in his rocket, Blue Origin.
August: the best way to earn cash within the college holidays
Image supply, Benyamin Ahmed
This yr we discovered that NFT stood for Non-Fungible Token. Less understood was what it meant – basically a digital token that can be utilized as a method of paying for digital collectibles.
Elsewhere, an NFT of an animated cat GIF bought for greater than £365,000, whereas Jack Dorsey’s first ever tweet hit £2.5m and Tim Berners-Lee net supply code NFT went for a cool $5.4m.
But the NFT craze was not with out its critics: writer David Gerard describes NFTS because the “new type of nugatory magic bean”.
Either method, it was onerous to disregard, and NFT made it into Collins dictionary of recent phrases for 2021 – together with Metaverse.
September: Bad vibrations
The doc, revealed by Apple and noticed by MacRumours, advised that engine vibrations may hurt the telephones’ optical-image stabilisation or closed-loop autofocus methods.
The BBC’s retelling of the story received tens of millions of hits.
October: the agency previously referred to as Facebook
Image supply, Getty ImagesImage caption,
A rebrand for Facebook attracted much less consideration than just a few hours outage of its providers
It was additionally the month that Facebook introduced its new concentrate on the metaverse – an idea that has quickly develop into probably the most hyped phrases of 2021, and one which Mark Zuckerberg appears to have countless enthusiasm for.
Essentially, it’s a digital actuality model of the web by which Meta, together with another huge names in tech, believes we’ll reside, play and work sooner or later sooner or later.
Of course, the extra cynical puzzled if the newfound enthusiasm for the metaverse – which got here with not only a firm rebrand, however a plan to rent 10,000 folks within the EU to construct it – was a distraction from Facebook’s ongoing points with real-world content material.
November: the hunt for hackers
Image supply, National Crime CompanyImage caption,
Rumours counsel alleged Evil Corp hacker Maksim Yakubets’ marriage ceremony might have price greater than half 1,000,000 {dollars}
It took him to a golf course and a shiny skyscraper in Moscow. He did not discover the hackers, however he did study that they have been making an enormous amount of cash – alongside driving the requisite Lamborghinis, internet hosting plush weddings and retaining unique pets.
Any direct hyperlinks to the Russian state are denied by the Kremlin, however specialists imagine that hackers are allowed to flourish within the nation offered they do not goal Russian nationals. While US legislation enforcement claims they’re additionally enlisted for state hacking.
December: radioactive necklace
Image supply, RIVM
This yr there was a renewed surge of disinformation round vaccinations, Covid and politics.
Technology has not been proof against conspiracy theories both, with assaults on 5G transmitters from those that imagine they omit harmful radio waves.
Despite no proof the transmitters trigger any hurt, the speculation has spawned a spread of merchandise which declare to guard folks towards them.