What's the most important technological advancement of the last decade? Tell us for $2

Slightly off the wall answer here - computer music and specifically DAW recording software such as Garageband, Reaper and so on have opened up recording to the masses.

Recording music in the past was either a labour of love in a garage, or expensive studio, or rehearsal time, which often costs a small fortune for newer bands wanting to get their music out there.

DAW software, plugins and so on, and also midi has opened this up to anyone. All you need now is the imagination!

VR/AR finally becoming a mainstream product is probably the biggest advancement in this generation. While it still has a long way to go, within a decade we have seen it go from clunky dev kits to products such as the Quest 3 or Vision Pro. I think they have the potential to fundamentally change how we use tech, and opens up so many opportunities, and can be used in so many situations. Now it just has to go really mainstream in order to make any real impact and have even more investment made into it that the VR space still needs.

The VR solutions of the past decade are just making people aware of the tech and making the first important steps into the real exciting next generations, with sci-fi AR glasses and more.

I think it's one that we have yet to see the real impact of it, which will be massive, and that will be AI.

I see this disrupting the world in many ways from the content we watch to how we are dealt with by customer services of companies for example.

While there is so many negative outcomes we all rightfully worry about, I feel there is one place where AI could be massively helpful to us humans.

That is in healthcare.

Imagine all the information our smart watches or fitness trackers alongside tracking apps like my fitness pal taking all this into the mix for a personalized AI healthcare assistant who can accurately diagnose potential ailments or more importantly help you get healthier and hopefully ward of any future illnesses by getting ahead of the game!

As someone with underlying health challenges this would be sooo interesting to me as it could be a great help to enhance my health and quality of life.

I almost feel as if Apple is gearing up to launch something like this as with each device they launch they push further into health and wellness. Only time will tell.

And thats just the basic stuff im getting at here, never mind the difficulty stuff like AI helping to find cures for diseases as it can crunch data way faster and more effectively than we ever could! Fingers crossed it does!

So for me. Smart Watches, hear me out!

So I was always an Android baby, I hated Apple products, they were confusing to me, and pointless, the phones, and Macs, I hated them with a passion, but then, my wife brought me the iPhone 12 Pro Max and threw my old Android away, she said "it's time you had a decent phone" but with that, she ordered me an apple watch, within weeks, I was hooked on both.

What I love most about my smartwatch is it has led me to lose weight and take better care of myself, it has things like standing goals for the day, steps obviously but also tells me my blood pressure, when I get stressed I get warnings to "relax" since my wife set it up for me, but the great thing is, I don't need to carry my phone around. My watch can do pretty much everything my phone can, even take phone calls, gives a whole new meaning to "hand's free"

So yeh, for me, it's Smart Watches!

Electric vehicles and related battery/energy storage advancements. It's leading to the day (eventually) when it's rare to see and hear a non ev vehicle out on the road. It will be transformational to our health, the planets health (to a degree) and the way we experience the environment around us.

Imagine walking around without all the traffic noise we have today. Even in the countryside you still have the distant background noise of it all in most cases, as it's never far away. In built up areas you can taste the toxic air. In the future it will be as strange as looking back at smoke filled pubs, resteraunts and offices, how it was just accepted as part of the experience.

The resulting battery tech improvements feed into energy network improvements allowing the storage of renewable energy in the home or regionally on the energy grid at sub stations. Reducing or eliminating the need for fossil fuel top ups during high demand, low renewable generation times. This leads to cheaper energy supply costs at peaks time as well as the environmental benefits.