Rate of change of technology

by | Monday, January 26, 2009

I just stumbled upon this image from a 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics.


The tag line below the image says:
Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose.

Though it is easy to make fun of this image it can be incredibly difficult to make predictions about the future. I am reminded of the following image I use to show just how fast technology is changing, making predicting the future so very difficult.


Note: I picked this image up from the Internets a while ago, getting a citation would be great.

Also, one may ask how many years make up a generation?
The typical answer is 25 years, and the one used in this diagram.
This page discusses this at length.

This is indirectly related to my previous post about The more things change…

Topics related to this post: Design | Engineering | Evolution | Fun | Representation | Technology

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5 Comments

  1. 3d photos

    Technology provides teachers with the instructional technology tools they need to operate more efficiently and to be more responsive to the individual needs of their students

    Reply
  2. Andrew Beats

    I was just thinking the other day about how even today technology is changing so much. I cannot see how technology can get that much more advanced, considering we can access the world from our cell phones and watch movies in 3D. I suppose flying cars are next?

    Reply
  3. Bob Reuter

    I find it interesting to read “being digital” by Nicholas Negroponte, because he dared to make some predictions about the evolution of digital technologies in 1993… nice to see what turned out not to exist yet… and what is already a technology-of-the-past 🙂

    Reply
  4. Frenchy

    It’s really not easy to predict exactly the changes in technology in a distant future. While the photo denotes quite far from what we have now, there are more better hi-tech ways of cleaning the house today that having everything to be waterproofed.

    Reply

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  1. The Casualties of Change – Part 1 | Deeper Life - […] manageable to a rate of change that is spinning out of control. An interesting chart can be found here…

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