“Unprecedented”; “extraordinary”; “once-in-a-lifetime.” There’s no overstating the case for how 2020 has scrambled our lives and inflated the role of technology. It has moved front and center in almost every adaptation we’ve made to a year of living through a pandemic. 

From resilience in the C-suite to bringing the hospital to the home, technology in 2021 will draft off the accelerated trends brought about by social distancing measures and stay-at-home orders. We’ll see wellness imbued in building design as well as more immersive — and branded — retail experiences in a new virtual “metaverse” dimension. 

There are also technology trends on the immediate horizon that have bubbled up largely outside of the extraordinary 2020 experience. AI is now table stakes for companies, and the new race will be to imbue these algorithms with emotional data that differentiates and improves the customer experience. Crypto is officially mainsteam (perhaps helped along by a year of economic uncertainty and bored, home-bound crypto enthusiasts), so much so that we see payments companies embracing bitcoin as the new rewards points currency.