During a rare bit of downtime over the weekend, I had cause to ponder the current rate of technological advance and what that means for the 5, 10, 20 years ahead. Pretty deep hey? Well, that's how I roll people.
It came about really after reading this article about teenage boys accessing porn on their smartphones. The article is typically sensationalised and is designed to scare the pants off every mother of a teenage son. Oops. Maybe that's the wrong turn of phrase for this subject.
Anyway, it did lead to me further contemplating the smartphone phenomemon and what my 3 year old son is likely to have by the time he hits his early teens. Now I say 'likely' in a very loose manner, because I've got absolutely no idea what sort of communication device will be around by then and the mind boogles at what will be accessible and allowable on them.
Personally, it's only 12 years ago that I was introduced to email while heading off on a two-year backpacking jaunt around Europe and the US. I couldn't believe what it allowed me to do in terms of contacting friends and family and being able to provide regular updates of my travels. The internet opened things up enormously as well as all sorts of information about flights, accommodation, tours and mustsees was a mere few search engines away.
When I got back to Australia, everyone seemed to have a mobile phone where before I left they were only for showoffs in suits. So I came back and was the only one without a mobile and was left using phone boxes to communicate and sort out meetups for nights out and a like. The inconvenience soon became apparent though so I anxiously entered a mobile phone shop and signed my life away.
Next came the emergence of the MP3 player and ipods, etc. As a music lover I'd lugged my 'Discman' all over the world and thought I was at the height of the technological cutting edge as I slipped through Asia and the Middle East. But this new device, an MPsomething, was half the size and stored thousands more songs. I was on to it in a flash and still marvel at how it does the things it does.
So what now? Well, I've got an iPhone that does all of those things and is neatly packaged into a device that fits easily in my front pocket. I can make and receive phone calls. I can email anyone around the world. I can access the internet quickly and smartly. I can store thousands of songs and listen to them at any time. And with wi-fi, bluetooth, iCloud and a like, I can do all of these things while driving a car or sitting on a train.
I only just got my new phone a few weeks ago as well so there's probably hundreds of other things I can do that I don't even know about. Geez, when will I find the time?
But I digress. The reason for this little personal story is really to highlight how much technology has changed in the 10-12 years since my travels and what can be achieved on the current devices that we all have. Given where we've come from in that time period, it's hard to imagine where we'll be in another 10-12 years when the likes of my son will be demanding the latest one of those and the most up-to-date of that.
I mean, what on earth will we, and he, be able to do on a smart device by then. They probably won't even be 'smart' devices anymore anyway. They'll be ...uummm....well.....that's my point isn't it? I just can't fathom how much further technology will have advanced in 3-5 years let alone 2025 and beyond.
I guess this subject matter has always fascinated me. As a keen student of history, I marvelled at what the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Chinese were able to discover and invent hundreds of years ago without all the knowledge and science we have.
For western civilisation anyway, you can surely blame the Dark Ages for putting a kybosh on those advances for a few hundred years before the Enlightenment came around. And it seems we've been trying to make up for those lost years ever since. We've gone from believing the earth was flat to actually putting someone on the moon a mere few hundred years later.
That's some rate of technological advance my friends. And with a massive foot on the accelerator pedal as well. The speed toward the next big discovery and the next big invention is just plain phenomenal. One catalyst event after another.
So what are our kids in store for? And their kids after? Yes, my mind truly boogles with an imagination that only goes so far. Science fiction is fast becoming science fact-ion.
And all this from a media story about one of the oldest things ever - teenage boys trying to access porn. I'm quite the lateral thinker aren't I?
EDM.
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