Ok, so we know we’ve already created a show on why 2019 will be a horrible year, but today
we’d like to look at some positive things.
After all, as we said before, we don’t own a crystal ball, and we can look at the future
through the lens of a half-empty glass or a half-full one.
While bombs still fall over parts of the world, historically speaking these are fairly peaceful
times we are living in.
While Big Brother watches over us in the form of omnipresent CCTV cameras, those same cameras
might one day help catch the person that held you up at gunpoint and demanded your wallet.
So, let’s delve into a more positive view of next year, in this episode of the Infographics
Show, Why 2019 Will Be the Best Year Ever.
If you’ve been following tech news over the last few years, you’ll know that 2019
was supposed to be the year that autonomous vehicles, or self-driving cars, will take
off.
Companies such as Ford, GM, BMW, Uber and Waymo tell us the future is self-driving,
and some of those companies are getting pretty close to developing fully-autonomous vehicles.
Saying that, there’s so much hype in this massive multi-billion dollar market that it’s
hard to know just how far away we are from seeing cars all around us without a driver
in them.
A lot of companies are now saying we will have true driverless cars in the early 2020s.
Ford said it will have a, “Level 4 vehicle in 2021, no gas pedal, no steering wheel,
and the passenger will never need to take control of the vehicle in a predefined area.”
Whatever the year, it looks like this is going to happen and no doubt 2019 will see lots
of developments.
Why is this good?
Well, because we want less congestion in our streets.
We want less pollution in the air.
Self-driving cars can act as round-the-clock taxis and they won’t need to take up parking
spaces.
When the world has fully autonomous vehicles it will have less pollution, and that is a
matter of great importance.
There are some experts in the world that tell us that we will have less crime in developed
countries because of what’s called, “Predictive crime mapping.”
Yep, you’ve all probably seen the movie “Minority Report,” based on a story by
the sci-fi master, Philip K. Dick.
Crime mapping today is not the same as in the movie, but more like a machine making
sense of lots of crime data and then predicting what will happen next.
The UK press in 2017 wrote, “In the UK, police forces have found that it’s about
10 times more likely to predict the location of future crime and prevent it, than random
beat policing.”
The technology, though, is still in its early stages.
Critics also say that relying on computer models to tell you where crime will happen
might result in some bias.
The tech-crime fighting software is somewhat controversial.
We can look at what happened when people found out Amazon was selling its facial recognition
technology to police departments in the USA.
A lot of people weren’t happy about that, and under testing the technology wasn’t
all that reliable.
We can also look at parts of China, or even the UK, where CCTV is everywhere.
Nonetheless, those that endorse these technologies tell us crime is going down because of them,
after all, how many criminals these days are caught on camera?
The answer is many.
The FBI in America tells us the violent crime rate is down and in 2018 it said the murder
rate was the lowest in 33 years.
Bloomberg wrote that in 2018 many Americans are not convinced when they see the data that
violent crime rates are down, but the data doesn’t lie.
Bloomberg added that one of the reasons for this disbelief is that the media still follows
a “If it bleeds, it leads” standard, and if you consume a lot of media all you seem
to see is horror stories.
Pew Research said the same thing, that violent crime, as well as property crime, is down
in the USA, but the public isn’t sold.
If the dropping crime rate trend continues as it is, we may all live in a safer place
in 2019.
Well, we can’t speak for every country, but there is no doubt that all over the world
technology is helping to reduce the amount of crime.
We can also look at waste reduction.
We know now that plastic is filling our oceans and that is a terrible thing, but we are told
that 2018 was a good year in terms of developments to cut down on plastic waste.
The EU said in 2018 that it will ban single-use plastic.
A vote already cast means it will happen, but it might not be until 2021 that single-use
plastic is a thing of the past within EU countries.
But just look at the number of companies doing away with things like plastic straws.
American Airlines just reported the plastic straw will be no more in its airport lounges.
Many schools and food service places have promised to cut back on single-use plastic,
and this is happening now and will continue through 2019.
Powerful countries, and ones that create lots of plastic waste, such as the USA, China and
Japan, have recently signed-off on legislation to stop “making our oceans into their landfills.”
This happened at the end of 2018, and we can expect many countries in the world to be better
behaved relating to plastic use and how it’s dumped come 2019.
You can read myriad stories in 2018 in which companies and countries brought in new laws
or rules all related to bringing down the amount of plastic waste.
These are ongoing projects, but 2019 will be a year of massively reduced plastic consumption.
This will definitely be a year when you see far fewer plastic straws being offered to
you.
Even fast-food giant McDonald’s said it’s phasing out the use of plastic straws, which
started with locations in the UK and Ireland.
That was in 2018, but in the US, France and Norway 2019 will see the company starting
trials to eliminate plastic straws.
The list goes on, but we can say that 2018 was a big year for reducing plastic use and
2019 will be the year we see it more and the oceans start to feel it.
Are we getting fitter?
Well, as you’ll know from watching our shows and countless documentaries out there, many
countries in the world have been faced with an obesity crisis for some time.
In America, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us Americans have heeded
the call to fitness and are exercising more than ever.
In the UK, healthy numbers of people have taken up jogging, more so than in the past.
Now we have better wearable technology and apps that tell you that you are a lazy so-and-so
because you barely moved the entire day.
The CDC tells us however that we might be moving more, but we aren’t eating healthy
enough.
That’s despite numerous apps we can use to tell us how many calories we have consumed.
In 2018, Forbes told us that DNA testing is getting cheaper and easier to do.
This is important, as no two people are the same.
Our bodies respond to foods and to exercise differently, and the article explains that
a DNA test might be able to tell you what is best for you in order to keep fit and keep
away disease.
Forbes writes, “The idea of all this is that once your results are recorded, and you
can assess them online, your fitness tracker can give you tips based on your genetic profile,
making it all much more valuable than before, with less guesswork.”
But again, this started in 2018 and it will be 2019 when we see better, more accessible
products hit the market.
All this doom and gloom apropos our health, featured in the media and in documentaries
over the last few years, might induce us to take action now.
We predict that 2019 will be a better year for our bodies.
We are right now on the precipice of having better health.
2018 was a year that saw many people decry our overuse of technology.
Facebook came under fire from former investors, psychologists, and the public.
It was the year we were told we are getting exploited and we are way too addicted to Facebook
and other technologies.
Then companies such as Apple started developing ways that we might use tech in a healthier
way.
While tech addiction fears have been going on for a while, 2018 was the year that people
really got smart to it.
We might well see in 2019 people using tech in healthier ways.
Then we had the year of fake news, and certain platforms trying to cut back on the spread
of it.
2019 might just be a much cleaner year after all that criticism some online platforms faced
in 2018.
Critics fear tech will just impinge on our freedom, and we will be left with highly censored
platforms.
But hey, at least if it’s transparent and we have the freedom to talk about that, it’s
something we can keep an eye on.
And we all know about data breaches, the biggest being the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal.
Our data should be safer from now on, and 2018 was also a year that big tech became
a bit more transparent in what data they collect and how it is used.
Tech behaving badly filled the news in 2018, with not just data-related issues but also
workplace safety.
Google had massive walkouts in November 2018, concerning how women were treated in its offices.
We imagine things will improve come 2019, and badly behaving men will not be filling
the pages of newspapers weekly.
You might think we are looking through rose-tinted glasses right now, but we are only trying
to put a brighter spin on things.
What good things do you think will happen in 2019?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video: Why 2019 Will Be A Horrible Year.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.