Countless technical topics are exciting this year, and we can continue to look forward to stylish smartphones and great loudspeakers.
However, one trend topic will have to be discussed critically: It is the new possibilities of biometric face recognition and the capabilities of surveillance cameras that are going into the dystopian.
There's the story of a lawyer who walked into Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan before Christmas to take her daughter to a musical.
However, she was prevented from entering the room by security personnel, saying she had been identified with facial recognition software, she belonged to a law firm that was suing the owner, and all the lawyers at that law firm were undesirables.
Even if they are not entrusted with the case in question.
Chinese surveillance cameras from Hikvision can do even more.
Not only biometric face recognition and the evaluation of which ethnic group someone belongs to.
But they also recognize behaviors.
For example, whether students are bored.
In public space, they automatically record gatherings of people, elevators and other forms of protest, such as collections of signatures.
They recognize gambling, theft and pornography.
Hikvision cameras have long been banned in the United States.
In Europe, the EU Council of Ministers decided at the beginning of December to expand the possible uses of cameras with automatic face recognition.
However, such ubiquitous facial recognition and all-round recording of the individual should not exist in a liberal democracy.