The 5 Most Interesting News of 2021 on Innovation and Digital

2021 was a year full of innovation and with great developments in sectors such as virtual and augmented reality, NFTs and Cryptocurrencies but also for artificial intelligence and the development of interaction between man and machine, in fact the most important news reflects these 5 trends. Here's a quick recap in case you missed them:

1. Facebook Inc changes its name to “Meta” to shift focus to its commitment to building the metaverse.

On October 28 at the Connect 2021 conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced the name change of the company, which controls not only the social media Facebook, but also Instagram, WhatsApp and develops the Oculus Rift viewers. Zuckerberg said that the company's goal for the next few years is to be perceived by users no longer as a "social media company" but as a "metaverse company".

Source: The Verge

2. Christies's sold an NFT at a historical price.

Beeple's Everydays: The First 5000 Days, created by Beeple, reached a value of $69.346.250, setting the third highest price ever spent for a living artist at auction. This is the first NFT sold by a major auction house. The work is called Quantum and is an octagonal animation that changes color continuously while you look at it.

Source: artslife

3. Artificial intelligence determined the 3D structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence.

An AI program developed by Google's DeepMind has finally managed to solve one of biology's biggest challenges.

The system, called AlphaFold, was able to predict protein structures with extreme precision, in the biennial competition called Casp, an acronym for Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction.

Source: Wired

4. Neuralink, Elon Musk made a monkey play Pong using only his thoughts.

In a YouTube video shared by Musk's company, Pager, a 9-year-old macaque, is seen dabbling with the historic Pong in a telepathic 100% manner. As TheVerge reports, the chip was implanted in the specimen's skull about six weeks before filming. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the 1,024 electrodes of the sensor were able to "map" the neurons activated by the primate in correspondence with each single movement, thus creating a personalized predictive model. The experiment saw the monkey being able to move the bars without the aid of the joystick, using only the wireless channel activated between the computer and its N1 Link type brain chip

Source: Courier

5. Ethereum and Bitcoin hit new all-time highs.

A new record for cryptocurrencies was set on Monday, November 7th. The capitalization of cryptocurrencies has exceeded 3,000 billion dollars. Bitcoin also surpassed the $68,000 threshold setting a new record at $68,513 and dragged Ethereum with it to a peak of $4,840. A few days earlier, the first ETF dedicated to cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Strategy ETF, made its debut at the NYSE.

Source: citywire