I Remember When?

I work in an industry often thought of as cutting edge when it comes to technology, after all we did have the first online aggregators of information in the airline reservation systems, 25 to 30 years ago. So having been around before those systems and being a bit of a geek I feel I worthy enough to comment on what else might be on your technology Christmas list.

With most of what we use today, not being around around 10 years ago, 25 years ago could almost be last century, come to think of it, it was last century. High definition everything, GPS, Wi-Fi, E mail, Google, YouTube, iPod, iPhone, Kindle, Wii, Facebook, Twitter, Android, iPads, online music, streaming movies, Linked In, NFC, clouds and the list goes on and on. Innovation is producing so much change it's hard to keep up, not just for my industry but for for any industry hoping to take advantage of efficiencies.

In the "old days" innovation came but once a year and stayed around to help out for years. Think about the fax and how long it was the object of desire for offices and then became a staple for all, with no competitor in sight, I still see one in the back of the office now. Go further back and think of the typewriter and the scene is the same. For the history challenged out there, a typewriter was just beyond stone tablets when compared to correspondence today. As each new innovation came along, it was supposed to kill the previous one.

That didn't happen because innovation built on previous technology and even though TV and then DVDs were supposedly the death of Cinema, Cinema kept reinventing itself with 3D a prime example of that fork in the road, with both paths still relevant. The phone fell off the wall and into our hands and onto our PC via Skype, books fell off the shelf and into our E readers and the mailman stopped delivering letters but we still got them by the inbox full.

So what does the future hold? To a certain extent it will hold more of the same, slightly similar but different. The phone will morph fully into the handheld PC and wallet we all want but still make phone calls, more books will end up online but the printed word won't disappear, streaming of media will increase but TVs will remain, although size will increase and composition may see just a pane of glass hanging on your wall in the future. Music like most things retail will continue to move from the stores to online, trees will be happier because documents will end up digital and garage space will make way for the cloud.

Sure size will matter as we become more mobile but I'm not sure that futurist, Ray Kurzweil's prediction that the phone will eventually be the size of a red blood cell will get past the masses. How will I dial the number? The real trick for the future of technology will be the user acceptance that whatever they buy will be obsolete in no time flat and to not get too attached and disappointed but be aware of the next best thing coming round the corner.

Replacement, not the same but similar is the catch cry of the future, because in the end, none of us like too much change.