2021 Good Technology Awards


In the tech industry, 2021 was the year of profits and pivots.

All the big tech companies have grown, thanks in part to the pandemic and the digitization of our lives. Facebook changed its name Meta to Jeff Bezos went to space, Jack Dorsey left Twitter and Silicon Valley fell harder for crypto.

Every December, partly to cheer myself up after a year of addressing the scandals and shortcomings of technology, I use this column to highlight a handful of tech projects that have improved the world throughout the year. My criteria are somewhat loose and arbitrary, but I’m looking for valuable, altruistic projects like start-ups that apply technology to big, social problems and don’t get much attention from the tech press. using artificial intelligence to fight forest fires, or meal delivery programs for the needy.

In particular, many technology leaders seems more interested in building new, virtual worlds It’s worth praising technologists who have stepped up to solve some of our biggest problems, rather than improve the world we live in.

So here it is, without further ado, this year’s Good Technology Awards.

One of the most exciting AI breakthroughs of the year came in July from DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company owned by Google. published data and open source code from the groundbreaking AlphaFold project.

Using artificial intelligence to predict the structures of proteins, the project solved a problem that has plagued scientists for decades and hailed by experts As one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time, AlphaFold has started a frenzy among researchers by freely publishing its data. already using to develop new drugs and to better understand the proteins involved in viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.

Google’s overall AI efforts full of controversy and missteps, but AlphaFold appears to be an unquestionably good use of the company’s vast expertise and resources.

People like to eat meat. But the industrial farm system that produces the vast majority of the world’s meat supply is an ethical and environmental disaster, and plant-based substitutes have not caught on with carnivores on a large scale. Hence the importance of cultured meat – which is grown from cells in the lab, rather than being taken from slaughtered animals – and it could be technology’s answer to our global meat addiction.

Despite more than a decade of research and development, cultured meat is still very expensive and difficult to produce. But that could soon change, thanks to the efforts of dozens of startups including Upside Foods, Mosa Meat, and Wildtype.

Advantage Foods, formerly known as Memphis Meats, opened a 53,000-square-foot factory in California this year and announced He had found a way to grow cells without using animal ingredients.

Moses MeatA Dutch cultivated meat company has also announced major breakthroughs in its technology. animal fat growing method this is 98 percent cheaper than the previous method.

And wild type, a San Francisco initiative produce lab-grown seafoodlaunched a new, cell-based salmon product this year. good reviews Although not yet approved by the FDA, it is in early testing.

Prisons are not known as novelties. But this year, two tech projects sought to make our criminal justice system more humane.

again It is a nonprofit technology startup that creates open source data tools for criminal justice reform. It was started by Clementine Jacoby, a former Google employee who saw an opportunity to collect data about the prison system and make it available to prison officials, lawmakers, activists, and researchers to report on their decisions. Their tools are used in seven states, including North Dakota, where data tools are helping prison officials assess the risk of the Covid-19 outbreak and identify incarcerated individuals eligible for early release.

ameelio, a non-profit startup founded by two Yale students and backed by technologists like Jack Dorsey and Eric Schmidt is trying to disrupt prison communications, a notoriously exploitative industry that charges exorbitant fees for phone and video calls from inmates and their loved ones. This year published a free video calling serviceTested in prisons in Iowa and Colorado, which plan to add more states next year.

When I first heard about experimental efforts towards 3D printing a few years ago, I dismissed them as a novelty. But 3D printing technology has evolved steadily since then and is now used to build real homes in the United States and abroad.

3D printing houses have many advantages: They are significantly cheaper and faster than conventional construction (homes can be 3D printed in as little as 24 hours) and can be built using local materials in parts of the world where concrete is difficult to obtain. with.

symbol, A Texas-based construction technology company has 3D printed more than two dozen structures so far. Its technology was used to print a house in a village in Mexico this year, and the company break fresh ground on a development that will consist entirely of 3D-printed homes in Austin, Texas, next year.

Strong BuildingsHeadquartered in Oakland, California, it takes a slightly different approach. It sells prefabricated house kits consisting of 3D printed panels produced in the factory and assembled on site. Their homes are powered by solar panels and loaded with energy-efficient features, and they recently struck a deal to 3D-print 15 homes in a subdivision in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

It should be said that our national housing crisis is not primarily a technology issue. Poor zoning and tax laws, NIMBY protectionism, and other factors played a role In making housing affordable for many. But it’s comforting to know that if local and state governments come together and start building more housing, 3D printing can help speed up the process.

Few tech stories have had as much impact this year as the statements from former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen. became an informant Who was the main source of The Wall Street Journal’s blockbuster movie?Facebook Files” series. By publicly releasing thousands of documents detailing internal Facebook research and discussions about the harms of the platform, Ms. Haugen has enhanced our collective knowledge of Facebook’s inner workings and herself congressional testimony It was a turning point for technology responsibility.

Shortly after Ms. Haugen went public, two former members of Facebook’s integrity team, Jeff Allen and Sahar Massachi, Launched the Integrity Instituteis a nonprofit that aims to help social media companies solve tough issues around trust, security, and platform governance. Her announcements garnered less attention than Ms. Haugen’s document dump, but they’re all part of the same worthwhile effort to educate lawmakers, technologists and the public on how to make our social media ecosystem healthier.

Ms. Scott, who divorced Jeff Bezos in 2019, is not a tech founder or a start-up expert. But Amazon’s wealth, estimated at more than $50 billion, is giving away at a rate that will make other tech philanthropists look like penny pincers.

HE Donated over $6 billion in 2021 alone An astonishing feat for an individual working with a small team of mentors to a number of charities, schools and social programs. (On scale, the entire Gates Foundation gave $5.8 billion in direct grants in 2020.)

And unlike other donors whose names have splashed onto the buildings and museum wings, Ms. Scott announced her gifts in a series of silences. exaggerated blog posts. Let’s hope more tech bosses follow in his footsteps in 2022.



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