A Decade of Technology – 2012

Continuing our 10 year anniversary celebrations, this month we take a look at 2012.

One of the most note-worthy events of 2012 happened on 15 August when employees of Saudi Aramco noticed their computers were acting strangely. They later discovered that they are victims of the largest cyber-attack to date. The attack resulted in the data of at least 35,000 computers being partially or totally wiped out. The company’s network did not come back online until five months later.

Other highlights of a very busy year in the technology industry includes the following:

• Computer Hope, Craigslist, Google, Reddit, Twitter, Wikipedia, and more than 115,000 other websites go dark in protest of the SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act) on January 18.
• On January 4, Trident Microsystems, Inc. and Trident Microsystems Ltd., filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.
• The Julia programming language was released.
• Google introduced Google Play on March 6.
• Google released Google Drive, an online file storage service.
• The first Chromebox came out on May 29.
• Raspbian, a free operating system, was released in July.
• Apple released macOS X Mountain Lion for desktops on July 25.
• Apple introduced the iPad mini on October 23.
• Tinder was introduced.
• The Bitcoin Foundation, a non-profit organization, was founded to promote Bitcoin.
• Facebook announced its intentions of purchasing Instagram for 1 billion dollars in cash and stock in April. The deal was later finalized on September 6.
• IPv6 – the networking standard went live in June, replacing the previous decades-old standard for allocating IP addresses on the internet for a new era of connectivity that spans an endless ecosystem of smart devices.
• The virtual reality headset market as we know it began with Oculus.

Fun facts:

• It wasn’t the end of the world on December 21, 2012, as the Mayans predicted but the video Gangnam Style hit over 1 billion views on YouTube.
• In December 2012, Time magazine noted that selfie was among its the “top 10 buzzwords” of 2012.
• The Tesla Model S changed the game for electric cars in the US. The company’s second car after the Tesla Roadster was—at $50,000—a more affordable four-seat sports sedan, which was named Motor Trend Car of the Year.