Even if you’re a luddite who would rather not engage with every new tech trend, chances are you’re going to have to learn about them anyway. That’s why I’m here. Just as in years past, 2023 is sure to bring prominence to plenty of tech buzzwords you haven’t heard yet. That, or existing terms will take on whole new meanings.
Either way, you need to know about it. You’re hungry for knowledge, I can feel it. Without wasting any more time, let’s dig into the tech terms you should really learn before the calendar changes.First up is extended reality, commonly shortened to XR. This is not a new term by any means, but it’s one you’re likely to hear going forward as companies like Meta push their visions of the metaverse into our lives. Thankfully, XR is pretty easy to understand. It’s an umbrella term for virtual reality, augmented reality, and everything in-between. As I’m sure you know, VR is when you put on a headset like a Meta Quest 2 and goof off in fully virtual worlds. AR involves digitally placing virtual objects into the real world, like a Snap filter. When the two come together, we call that mixed reality, which also fits under the XR umbrella.
With Meta pushing its Quest Pro mixed reality headset and Apple set to launch one of its own, XR is primed to have a moment in 2023. No, this doesn’t refer to the proud Na’vi people of Pandora, or bald kids with arrows on their heads. The tech definition for “avatar” is unfortunately a lot less cool.
At least it’s simple, though. An avatar is merely a digital representation of yourself, whether it’s in a video game, the metaverse, or wherever else it might be applicable. It can look like you or it can look like Spongebob Squarepants holding a bong or something. That’s the beauty of digital worlds like VRChat.
Get creative, or don’t. Doesn’t really matter to me. But just know you’ll probably have to make an avatar at some point if you haven’t already. The technical details behind stable diffusion are way too high-level for me and probably for you as well. There’s a Medium post that explains it if you’re interested, but it’s more important to understand what stable diffusion does rather than how it works.
Put simply, stable diffusion is a specific type of AI text-to-image generation that came out in 2022. Unlike competitors such as DALL-E, stable diffusion can work directly off your computer’s GPU (DALL-E is cloud-only, by contrast) and the code behind it is open-source, so people can kind of do whatever they want with it.
At the end of the day, though, it’s just another way to generate images of Peter Griffin dunking a basketball over Sonic the Hedgehog. Just…be mindful of the fact that you may be accidentally stealing work from actual, human artists in the process.
Tech
The Most Important Tech Terms You Need To Know For 2023
What do Matter, FAST, and stable diffusion have in common? You probably don't know what they mean yet.
By Alex Perry Dec. 26, 2022
The Most Important Tech Terms You Need To Know For 2023
> Tech
As technology evolves, so does our collective vocabulary.
Even if you’re a luddite who would rather not engage with every new tech trend, chances are you’re going to have to learn about them anyway. That’s why I’m here. Just as in years past, 2023 is sure to bring prominence to plenty of tech buzzwords you haven’t heard yet. That, or existing terms will take on whole new meanings.
Either way, you need to know about it. You’re hungry for knowledge, I can feel it. Without wasting any more time, let’s dig into the tech terms you should really learn before the calendar changes.
Extended reality
Reality is about to become extended. Maybe.
First up is extended reality, commonly shortened to XR. This is not a new term by any means, but it’s one you’re likely to hear going forward as companies like Meta push their visions of the metaverse into our lives.
Thankfully, XR is pretty easy to understand. It’s an umbrella term for virtual reality, augmented reality, and everything in-between. As I’m sure you know, VR is when you put on a headset like a Meta Quest 2 and goof off in fully virtual worlds. AR involves digitally placing virtual objects into the real world, like a Snap filter. When the two come together, we call that mixed reality, which also fits under the XR umbrella.
With Meta pushing its Quest Pro mixed reality headset and Apple set to launch one of its own, XR is primed to have a moment in 2023.
Avatar
I've always wondered what Daft Punk would look like with cat ears and angel wings.
No, this doesn’t refer to the proud Na’vi people of Pandora, or bald kids with arrows on their heads. The tech definition for “avatar” is unfortunately a lot less cool.
At least it’s simple, though. An avatar is merely a digital representation of yourself, whether it’s in a video game, the metaverse, or wherever else it might be applicable. It can look like you or it can look like Spongebob Squarepants holding a bong or something. That’s the beauty of digital worlds like VRChat.
Get creative, or don’t. Doesn’t really matter to me. But just know you’ll probably have to make an avatar at some point if you haven’t already.
Stable diffusion
Close enough, I guess.
The technical details behind stable diffusion are way too high-level for me and probably for you as well. There’s a Medium post that explains it if you’re interested, but it’s more important to understand what stable diffusion does rather than how it works.
Put simply, stable diffusion is a specific type of AI text-to-image generation that came out in 2022. Unlike competitors such as DALL-E, stable diffusion can work directly off your computer’s GPU (DALL-E is cloud-only, by contrast) and the code behind it is open-source, so people can kind of do whatever they want with it.
At the end of the day, though, it’s just another way to generate images of Peter Griffin dunking a basketball over Sonic the Hedgehog. Just…be mindful of the fact that you may be accidentally stealing work from actual, human artists in the process
Artificial intelligence (or AI) is, obviously, a decades-old term. You probably have some idea of what it means, too: the capacity for machines to perceive and work with information. That said, AI is going to come up a lot in 2023, so it’s worth going over at least a couple of the popular applications for it you’ll see.
We’ve already covered AI image generation courtesy of stable diffusion and DALL-E. Another example is that AI is also a blanket term for how phones like the Google Pixel 7 can automagically fix photos you’ve taken or give you a graphical UI for automated phone call menus. There’s even a new chatbot called ChatGPT that takes any prompt you give it and spits out, well, something. It’s often absurdly wrong, but hey, at least it tries.
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