In his interview on BBC’s World Book Club last month, Chinese author Chan Koonchung spoke about 'the importance of the year ending with a 9';

'Next year (2019) is an important year because 1949 was the beginning of the People’s Republic so it’s the 70th anniversary and we have other years ending with a 9 of significance,' said the author of “The Fat Years”, a dystopian novel of China where a period of Chinese history went completely missing, and records expunged from the Internet, documents, books and in people’s memories.

“You can make a new past through technology, it’s becoming more and more possible,” he wrote.

We won’t go into the past here, rather the future that awaits us the next 12 months.

There’s something significant about the turning of a decade – a transition to something new yet written, a bridge to a new place yet unmapped.

Remember 1999 and the scare over the Millennium bug, and how the whole world got spooked over that? An accountant friend recalled having to back up and store the company’s accounts, fearing the “bogeyman” would come in as the clock struck twelve and steal all the files.

It didn’t happen, yet it made us fear and respect the import of a turning of a decade.

In 2018, the word of the year was AI and machine learning and it is clear the continued progress of this technology will unleash something new.

Baidu’s chief executive Robin Li Yanhong in his letter to staff on the first working day of 2019 said the “historical transformation of AI is penetrating various industries, unleashing enormous growth potential and room for upgrade”.

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