Whether companies can deliver is another question
- We’ll get our first clues at this week’s CES electronics show in Las Vegas — a sprawling event that offers an exclusive glimpse at the tech that could help shape the year. (That is, unless the high transmissibility of the omicron variant of the coronavirus forces organizers to shutter the show. Big-name attendees including Intel, Meta and Amazon have pulled out, and show organizers have shortened the event by one day — it now runs Wednesday through Friday.)
- Before the show and the rest of the year kick off in earnest, we wanted to break out our crystal ball to suss out what the new year will mean for the tech in your life. Some of the developments we’ll discuss are long overdue.
- In many ways, 2022 will be a year of “hurry up and wait,” Carolina Milanesi, a technology analyst with research firm Creative Strategies, told us. Big tech developments like “the metaverse,” autonomous vehicles and greater repairability will take time to catch up to their hype, and companies must be careful not to overpromise, Milanesi said.
- At the same time, companies need our buy-in more than ever. If we don’t trust companies enough to share a whole lot of it, that technology gets stuck in the “my voice assistant still doesn’t understand me” phase.
- Here’s what we expect — and in some cases, hope — to see in 2022.
A race into the ‘metaverse’
- Facebook parent company Meta may have generated the most buzz with its foray into the metaverse — a theoretical shared space where people can hang out in virtual reality — but the other tech giants won’t be far behind.
- 2022 will be a “race into the metaverse” as large tech companies wrestle for slices of an emerging market, according to Rolf Illenberger, CEO of virtual reality software maker VRdirect. (Just how “meta” this collection of walled-off virtual environments will be remains to be seen.)
- The giants aren’t alone, either: In recent years, parts of the CES show floor have become a playground for start-ups building augmented and virtual reality headsets, and many are eager to make their mark on the metaverse. Meanwhile, there’s another hurdle the industry will need to clear.
- As for the rest of us, our first steps into the metaverse will probably be for our jobs. As consumer tech catches up, though, the metaverse will seep out of the workplace and into our everyday lives — but don’t get too excited. There’s a long way to go and lots of questions to answer before what tech companies are pitching as “the metaverse” becomes a reality.
The smart home will make a lot more sense
- If you walk into a big-box retailer or hardware store, it probably wouldn’t take you long to find smart-home goodies like connected lightbulbs and thermostats. What can take a while is finding stuff that works with the products you already have — but that might not be the case for much longer.
Some of the biggest names in Big Tech, including Apple, Amazon, Google and Samsung, have teamed up to develop a new smart-home standard called Matter. The aim: to ensure that the home gadgets you buy in the future all play nice with one another, regardless of who made them or what virtual assistant you want to use when interacting with them.
Electric vehicles are inching toward the mainstream
- Some 2022 tech trends are all about what’s not new. This year, electric vehicles will transition from cutting edge to standard issue — if you live somewhere with the infrastructure to support EV charging.
- Electric models from household names including Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen will make EVs accessible to more people at lower prices. Market leader Tesla will continue expanding, and start-ups like Lucid and Rivian will elbow their way into the fray.
Fixing your tech will start to get easier
- Phones, laptops, tablets — we rely on gadgets like these every day, but companies haven’t exactly made them easy to fix when things go wrong. Slowly, but surely, it seems that might be starting to change.
- Apple, which for years maintained strict control over how its products could be fixed, will roll out a self-service repair program in early 2022. The (somewhat surprising) move will allow enthusiastic amateurs to access the parts and guides to fix their iPhones and Mac computers.
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