Undeniably, the year of the pandemic was also the year of technology. With the planet locked down, offices and bars deserted and no one on the street, digital extension has surrogated physical space, challenging its limits, declining new potential. Personal computers are back in the limelight, smartphones more essential than ever, in the year Apple made 5G mainstream, up to this point topic concerning geeks, or conspiracists. Never before have we invested as much as we did this year in screens and improved solutions to access the Internet, make video calls, and consume entertainment and games in a more enjoyable and functional way. We bought new audio speakers to use with the family and new headphones to isolate us in our living room, to listen to music and especially podcasts, which are increasingly popular. Voice assistants have evolved, becoming a common thread between home and outdoor life. Gaming has connected us more than ever (see the Among Us or Animal Crossing phenomenons in different parts of the year) and Twitch has evolved into a useful platform for design and music festivals, shared digital experiences and beyond. Finally, living more at home has led to paying more attention to the home environment, starting with air quality and better appliances. And more attention to us, who being so much in the apartments do not move as much as before: health and control of body parameters will be increasingly present in technology, probably one of the central focuses of 2021.

This list couldn't start any differently. If there's one app we'll remember from 2020, it's Zoom, which served as our window to the office and school; we had cocktails on Zoom, dinners on Zoom, long chats with friends and family. But Zoom has also been our gym, the space to take a yoga or cooking class, an art gallery, the place to flirt. And the virtual backgrounds were a surrogate of traveling while it was banned. So the mythical and retrofuturistic “video call” seems to have finally found its momentum. Of course, more videochat options are not just Zoom: to talk to each other face-to-face we've used Microsoft's Teams, plenty of Whatsapp, someone surely Apple's FaceTime, dear old Skype, then Google Meet, Messenger, Houseparty, and so on. But it is undeniable that the standard is Zoom, which is now like saying iPhone for a smartphone or GoPro for an action cam.
As Zoom established itself as a standard for communication, a possible sliver of how these technologies may evolve entered our horizon. The most blatant innovation at IFA 2020 was undoubtedly the hologram of LG president Ip Park, which showed up during the Korean company's press conference without making us regret too much the scene from the first Star Wars we all have in mind, the one where Princess Leia's hologram asks Obi-Wan for help. But we had even more holograms. In December, during the Gorillaz concert which was streamed from London, actually underwhelming compared to expectations in terms of imaginative scope, the polyhedral American musician Beck showed up in hologram version. It’s not a first time for the musical project by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, that in 2006 showed up at the Grammys in hologram version for a duet with Madonna. In that case, it was a total disaster.

A future in which virtual reality will play a major role has been talked about for decades. But that future hasn't arrived yet. Now, however, the pandemic and the global lockdown seem to have brought us closer to a virtual reality that is finally habitable and populated. Meanwhile, we sway between a past of unsuccessful attempts, see Google's, and a future in which Apple is expected to make its move. In the meantime, it's mostly in the hands of Facebook and its Oculus brand that the mainstream present of VR lies: the Oculus Quest 2, the new VR headset launched in late 2020, costs the same as a mid-range phone, has better resolution than its predecessor, and can be connected to a computer to gain more power. But the future of VR visors is likely to be stand-alone: for now, the Oculus is mostly communicated as a gaming machine – there are some interesting native games, like Beat Saber, and you can play the highly praised Half Life: Alyx via PC -, but the ones that in the future hold the most promise are probably the creative scenarios, with apps like Tilt Brush (by Google, in fact) or Gravity Sketch, and the social ones - AltSpaceVR and BigScreen are among the very few interaction platforms where anything interesting happens, at the moment. Landing in the Oculus Quest interface is like finding yourself a pioneer on a virgin planet, a western outpost of digital, only a little less grim. And it's good like that, even if the lack of content is often frustrating: to give an example, VR documentaries, and the one on Notre Dame is a case in point, have a still unexplored potential. In short, VR can only be expected to grow. And this is a great time to get your foot in the door. The first Quest was pioneering the concept of a standalone VR headset, while this one is a product ripe to jump on the back of virtual reality before it explodes in the next few years.

The Danish company has restored and updated 95 original units of the historic device to celebrate its 95th birthday, implementing new components and finishes, but retaining the original design. “Retro“ is increasingly a trend in tech companies design roadmaps, and it's perfectly consistent for the same companies to reclaim old products and put them back on the market revised and upgraded.

Home air quality is one of Dyson's pet peeves, especially since the company refocused on the Eastern market and the highly polluted metropolises of Southeast Asia. But at a time when we are living at home much more than ever before, indoor air purification really becomes a priority for everyone. Not least because we may feel safe at home, but the truth is that there is pollution in the home and it is much greater than we imagine. This new purifier/humidifier takes the form of hot+cool, the purifier/fan already on the market, basically adding humidification, which works so simply and requires so little maintenance that it seems to have always been there. Plus, an ultraviolet light disinfects the water vapor before it's released into the air. The device is controlled via remote control, app or more simply via Alexa or Google Assistant, and is useful both in winter, with the heat on, and in summer, to mitigate the effects of air conditioning. The effects are there and can be seen directly from the app, where the air quality is constantly monitored.

A flexible appliance designed for millennials and Gen Z, complete with an anti-Covid option to sanitize cell phones, keys and more. And it's sustainable, but stress-free. Bob, designed by the French startup Daan Tech, was included among Domus' selection of tiny devices that can save space in a small apartment without forcing you to give up on the comforts of a contemporary home.

It costs a little less than an iPhone SE the accessory that tells well what the Cupertino company is today. And brings the iPad closer to what perhaps it wanted to be from the beginning. In a year in which Apple has had a lot to say, the keyboard that definitely gives computer dignity to the tablet par excellence is likely to go into the background. And that would be a shame.

Foldable phones seem to have found their way, and Lenovo - already behind the disruptive Motorola Razr - ups the ante and officially puts a Windows 10 tablet on the market that folds with a 13-inch screen. Aka, the first foldable laptop. You can use it fully open, as a tablet, fold it to carry it around (no external screens like on the Razr, unfortunately), or fold it at ninety degrees like you would a laptop (in this case, a mini laptop). It's terribly sexy, very expensive, and definitely anticipates a piece of our future. Its magic is just that, to live in that limbo between finished object and concept. When closed, it looks like a notebook, just as Brian Leonard, Lenovo's VP of design, anticipated, telling us that Moleskines were among the main sources of inspiration in the product's design. “Basically, a foldable device is easier to carry, but also more personal, just because of the way it's carried or used”.

In the year that Sony and Microsoft's next-gen is launched, with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with gaming also increasingly relevant as a platform for socialization and interaction between humans, it's hard to proclaim that consoles are dead, or even just not well. We'll probably find them in home environments for a long time to come. In the meantime, however, the dematerialization of gaming has been underway for a while now. As is its model of sale and fruition, which still associates consoles with the premium experience of playing. But the biggest success and most representative game of these years, Fortnite, although not free from in-game fetishism, thanks to a system of microtransactions that allows you to buy this and that to customize your character, has a little 'swept away the idolatry that hooks the player to the physical copy of the game. Fortnite is played on so many platforms and is itself its own fetish. It is the game in its phase of emancipation from the physical world and rise in the cloud, something similar to what happens with Xbox Game Pass, a Microsoft subscription that allows you for about ten euros a month to play on computers or consoles, and via streaming even on Android phones (but soon will also come on Windows and iOS, via browser). Streaming gaming, viewed with distrust in the ultra-conservative niche of gamers, is the future and perhaps even the present: proof of this is the fact that the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 misfired especially on PlayStation, where it runs very poorly, and is instead doing great on Stadia, the Google gaming service welcomed with a thousand perplexities and a bit of easy irony by those who play, but that works very well thanks to a system that acts as a bridge between the powerful computing machines of Big G and end users.

Let's admit it: when Sonos announced that it would launch a new app, not compatible with older devices, the first feeling was a certain disappointment. Because there are so many cases in the tech industry of brands that are born for a few, evolve as a cult and when they reach the mainstream they risk imploding, losing their freshness and uniqueness, as well as that attention to the consumer - or as we would say today, to the community - that maybe supported them from the beginning. Take OnePlus, VanMoof, but also Sonos, which today is a global leader in connected audio, with a partnership with Ikea under its belt. But then the reality is that the new app is compatible with an amazing range of devices, it's really a step up in interface and features, and that Sonos has churned out another hardware-jewel this year, just as it surprised us with the Move in 2019: the Arc soundbar is a technological marvel, with its finely chiseled surface of microphones, powerful but still balanced sound, and the ability to interact with Google Assistant or Alexa. You can use it as a soundbar when watching TV, or as part of an "expanded" Sonos system for music or podcasts. But the American company is not stopping there, and is moving with cautious ambition, building step by step also a credibility as a content provider. And with the exclusive radio stations, starting with the one curated by Thom Yorke, Sonos has shown how a brand can be eclectic, without losing its minimalism. The next step, we hope, will be towards personal audio: now that Apple has made them too, Sonos is really only missing a pair of headphones that will integrate into its ecosystem.

In early November, Apple unveiled the first three Macs with the new M1, a chipset based on the same ARM architecture as the iPhone and iPad processors, which effectively completely revolutionizes the performance of Cupertino's hardware. A change of paradigm that should have effects on the whole PC industry, starting from laptops.