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

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Undo & the the progress of technology

I have wondered what it would be like if life had an undo button, and what we would do without all this cool technology we have? I guess this is what happens when we use technology for too many hours a day. I was reminded of this when I Stumbled-Upon this online comic...

Modeling human behavior: The new dark art of silicon sampling

Modeling human behavior: The new dark art of silicon sampling

A couple of months ago I had written this post, On merging with our technologies – which was essentially quotes from a conversation Ezra Klein had with the novelist Mohsin Hamid. I finished the post with a quote speaking the dangers of predictive technologies on human...

The existence of futility

I have written about the value of seeing humor in the futility of existence (see this and this) but humor can also be found in the existence of futility. Below is a motivational video that demonstrates this fact. Enjoy......

The degradation of Matt

A rumination on goofy sketches, the perils of reproduction as it plays out in a children's game, a B-list Hollywood movie, and botany textbooks I read when in high school, all leading up to some thoughts on the history of scientific illustration. If this sounds even...

Children & anthropomorphic toys

Andrea Francis and I recently presented a paper at AERA titled "Differences in children's verbal responses and behavioral interactions with anthropomorphic toys." The abstract is as follows: Interactive toys for children are becoming more popular for both play and...

Yet another stop-motion movie

One Nikon D70, two bored kids, one snowy day... and 49 seconds of fun. Check out the latest stop-motion goofiness! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drc6Oo4b9C0 You could also see the 12 Days of Christmas, desi style (the original can be found here) as rendered by Shreya...

Design, Intuition & Creativity

Design, Intuition & Creativity

Chain-Rotational ambigram design for the word "design."One can read the word both clockwise from the top or anti-clockwise, from the bottom. Our latest article in the series we write for the journal TechTrends (under the broad rubric of Rethinking Technology...

The story of stuff

Check out Story of Stuff or watch the movie... [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucMJ32-xp64] For the new version of CEP817 or maybe even CEP917

Happy 2009, a stop motion movie

Soham, Shreya and I spent this afternoon making a stop-motion animation new year's card. Check it out... http://www.youtube.com/embed/7kw_icNKI44 Have a great 2009!

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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