A decade still in progress
The other articles in this series look back at finished decades. This one is different. The 2020s are not over, and historians usually need years of distance before they can say which developments mattered most and which only seemed important at the time. What follows describes some widely discussed trends as of this writing in late 2026, with the caveat that the picture may look quite different in a decade.
The pandemic and remote work
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed schools, offices and many other activities online within weeks. Video conferencing, shared documents and online learning tools saw heavy use, and demand for laptops, webcams and home networking equipment rose. Many organizations discovered that some work could be done remotely, and a mix of remote and in-office work stayed common afterward, though the balance varies by industry and employer.
The period also highlighted inequality in access. Students and workers without reliable internet or suitable devices had a harder time, which gave new urgency to long-running concerns about the digital divide. Online learning has had mixed results, and researchers continue to study how well it worked in different settings.
Chips, supply and geopolitics
Beginning around 2020 and 2021, shortages of semiconductors disrupted the production of cars, consumer electronics and other goods. The causes were a combination of sudden shifts in demand, factory and shipping disruptions, and the fact that advanced chip manufacturing is concentrated in a small number of places. Governments in several regions announced programs to support domestic chip production and to restrict certain exports. How effective these policies will be is still uncertain.
Apple introduced its own processors for Mac computers starting in late 2020, moving away from Intel chips, and other companies increased their use of custom designs. Specialized processors for training and running machine learning models became a major industry focus.
Generative AI
The most visible change for the public has probably been generative artificial intelligence. Building on the neural networks and Transformer designs of the previous decade, companies released systems that can produce text, images, audio and code from short written prompts. ChatGPT, released in late 2022, drew attention to large language models, and many companies quickly added similar assistants to search engines, office software and programming tools.
Opinions about these tools differ widely. Supporters point to uses in drafting, summarizing, tutoring and software development. Critics note that the systems can state false things confidently, can reflect biases in their training data, raise unresolved questions about copyright and creators’ work, and require large amounts of computing power and energy. Studies of their effect on jobs, education and the quality of online information are ongoing, and early results should be treated as tentative. Governments have begun to draft or adopt rules, with approaches that differ between regions.
Cloud, security and everyday devices
Cloud services continued to grow, and much of the new AI work depends on large data centers. This has raised practical questions about electricity use and about the concentration of computing resources in a few firms. Cybersecurity remained a constant concern, with ransomware, data breaches and software supply-chain problems regularly in the news. The Internet of Things kept expanding into homes and workplaces, with the same mix of convenience and risk.
Other technologies attract attention but are harder to judge. Quantum computers have been built and tested by several organizations, but their practical usefulness for everyday tasks remains limited and debated. Virtual and augmented reality headsets have been released by major companies, with enthusiastic fans but a modest share of the overall market so far. Blockchain-based projects have been through boom and bust cycles. Whether any of these will prove as significant as the web or the smartphone is not something this article can responsibly claim.
Reading recent history carefully
Several habits help when reading about this decade. Early claims about new technology are often exaggerated in both directions, being either dismissive or very optimistic. Figures quoted in news stories, such as the number of users or the size of an investment, change quickly and come from sources with their own interests. Many events that feel decisive now may look minor later, and some quiet developments may turn out to matter more.
Looking back at earlier decades is a useful check. Each one seemed to contemporaries to be moving unusually fast, and each produced surprises that few predicted. The best that can be said about the 2020s is that computing is deeply woven into daily life, that new tools are arriving quickly, and that people are still working out how to use them and how to manage the risks.