My Top 5 Videos of 2017

2017 was a huge year for my YouTube channel. And now that it's drawing to a close, I wanted to look back at the videos that made the biggest splash.

(Humble Joe note: There are many factors that go into the success of any particular video, most of which are out of my hands and totally in the hands of a faceless corporate algorithm. But I'll take it.)

Here are the top 5 videos from 2017:

#5: 5 Reasons Going To Mars Is A TERRIBLE Idea

Views: 183,523

I've made many a video about future Mars missions (as you'll see below) but haven't talked much about the dangers and challenges that await us as we make a Mars journey. So I cobbled together some of the biggest challenges for this video.

And YouTube for whatever reason showed this video to hundreds of thousands of people who had never seen the rest of my videos and assumed I was some kind of anti-science person. I got some pretty nasty comments on this one is what I'm saying.

Hurray for internet.

#4: NASA vs. SpaceX: Who Will Get To Mars First?

Views: 241,489

Didn't I just say I talked about Mars a lot?

I did this video because it seems like Elon Musk and SpaceX was in the headlines every other day with news of their Mars plans, but we weren't hearing a lot about what NASA has in mind. In fact, before I started researching this one, I really had no idea what NASA's plans were for Mars.

It turns out that NASA's plans actually involve doing some testing and deep space research in orbit around the moon, a strategy that I must say I agree with - for many of the reasons I stated in the previous video. Humans just haven't spent enough time outside the Earth's magnetosphere to really know what to expect from such long-term interplanetary flight.

I do wish their schedule wasn't so long-term though.

#3: Why Is Elon Musk Digging Tunnels Under Los Angeles?

Views: 304,743

One thing I've learned is that if I ever want to make sure a video performs well, throw some Elon Musk in there.

This video came hot on the heels of Elon's announcement of his Boring Company, which sought to increase the speed and efficiency of creating underground tunnels for automotive transport.

What wasn't known at the time was that his plans for an underground tunnel network was to actually propel cars on sleds instead of having them drive through, which seems to combine a little bit of the Hyperloop ideas into the tunneling system. But this came out later and therefore wasn't mentioned here.

Since this video came out, plans have been made to build tunnels from DC to Baltimore and a 6.5 mile test tunnel under Los Angeles. They have also entered negotiations to bore a tunnel under Chicago's O'Hare airport. All of this is still up in the air though (or should I say under the ground?).

#2: Moore's Law Is Ending. Here's 7 Technologies That Could Bring It Back To Life

Views: 413,720

Another video that turned out to be more controversial than I was expecting.

Many have been predicting the end of Moore's Law for a long time, while others continue to extend it into the future and create from that some amazing predictions about where we're going technologically. And these two groups don't quite see eye to eye.

The importance of Moore's Law - the idea put forth by Gordon E. Moore that computer chips will double their transistors every 18 months (later extended to 2 years) - lies in the fact that the entire computer industry and technological progress itself relies on predictions based on this law. But we're reaching some physical limits to how much smaller we can build our transistors before quantum effects begin to kick in and render them unstable.

Luckily, there are some mind-blowing ideas out there from quantum computers to protein computers that could keep this trend going beyond our traditional processing technology. Time will tell which ones prove to be useful.

And last but not least...

#1: Graphene Supercapacitors Are About To Change The World. Here's How.

Views: 434,410

Of course this is number one.

Of course this got more views than any other video I made this year. Of course it did.

Because in this video right out of the gate I made one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in any video ever.

When giving a little background into the history of battery technology, I accidentally said that Nickel Cadmium batteries are not rechargeable, which they totally are.

I meant to say Alkaline.
I was rushed to get this one out.
Google was broken.
My dog ate it.

Doesn't matter, I got something wrong and boy did I get told about it. So much so that I followed up that video with another video to correct the error. One that got 1/1000 the number of views this one did.

Once upon a time, I could correct mistakes like this by adding an annotation, but YouTube took those away, so now I'm left to just get told I'm an idiot in a thousand comments in a row. Oh well. That's the life of a big YouTube celebrity I guess.

Regardless, the video seems to have caught on and still performs well, so I can't complain. I mean I could... But I won't.

So that's it, the big performers of 2017. If you're new to the channel, this gives you a good idea of what I do. Feel free to head over to the channel (just follow one of the videos) and subscribe, or just follow me here on Steemit, I'll be posting all my new vids here in the next year.

Cheers!