Technologies that will change the world

Technology is changing. Lately, the changes seem to happen even more rapidly than ever before. It feels like new exciting technology is being announced every month or week, each looking promising and bringing some extra qualities to our life.

Which one of those new technologies will have the biggest influence on our lives? The answer would be different for each of us. My personal favorites are GraphQL & 5G which address the same problem - how to provide data better, faster & in the more accessible way.

The rise of 5G

Promising and interesting are the words commonly used to describe 5G. A while ago world heard about the concept of 5G but it was a distant vision. Now as the technology is being slowly tested in different parts of the world we are a couple of steps away from having it widely accessible. Of course, it will take some time to get the infrastructure in place, as well as apply 5G as a standard in the new devices but we are moving forward in the right direction. Some say that 5G is still theoretical and will need to prove its speed and reliability "on production" but that's how it works in the tech world.

Credits: undraw.co

GraphQL

Similarly to the 5G, GraphQL is about getting your data faster. Backing in 2012 during the mobile app boom team of Facebook mobile app engineers realized that the way that the data to the app is being served is not enough. They started working on a new way that would suit modern devs' needs better. The result of their work is known as GraphQL - a new language agnostic, standard for querying data. GraphQL uses types to make sure the client asks only for data possible to be returned, as well as giving frontend power to query & mutate data. It heavily reduces the number of bits transferred which results in better performance even on slow cellular connections.

The importance of "Zero-latency"

Speed is the benchmark for wireless network performance and 5G offers data transfer close-to-zero latency. Data transmission in real-time allows much more advanced concepts to be implemented as the loading time will no longer hinder their functionality especially i.e the IoT. Imagine self-driving cars reacting with a delay to the hazard detected on the road. The reaction time between our human and the brain is around ten milliseconds. An autonomous vehicle analyzing data with a latency of 1 millisecond will make it react 1000x faster than a human. Self-driving cars are a bit futuristic example but imagine the quality improvement of apps demanding very up to date data or how 5G could unleash the potential of brilliant concepts currently being held back by the technology.

Credits: undraw.co

The synergy

Now imagine the quality of accessing data combining GraphQL with 5G. Cool right? This might erase words such a "laggy" or "delay" from our vocabulary! The data access speed is what modern users, businesses, and the applications they are using daily really need. The global pandemic forced us to change the way we live. It's influence on every aspect of our lives such as how we work, spend free time, communicate, shop etc. makes zero-latency even more important nowadays. I believe that GraphQL & 5G will have a key role in modern development and would have a great (non-directly) influence on the new way of living.