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…

Human Creativity^AI: Team Energy Blog post

Human Creativity^AI: Team Energy Blog post

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When Truth Doesn’t Matter: AI Falls for Illusory Optical Illusions

When Truth Doesn’t Matter: AI Falls for Illusory Optical Illusions

I've been exploring ChatGPT's ability to analyze images, and the results have been impressive. From interpreting complex refugee statistics to conducting semiotic analyses of street art, the AI has shown a remarkable ability to extract meaning from visual information....

A New Definition of Literacy

A New Definition of Literacy

Note: For some context on the title image (above) please see an addendum at the end of this post. This past Friday was AI Literacy day, and I was invited, along with Ian O’Byrne (College of Charleston) to participate in a webinar on the topic. Readers of this blog...

Constructing knowledge on the web: New dissertation

I am pleased and proud to announce that Mike DeSchryver recently defended his dissertation, titled: Toward a Theory of Web-Mediated Knowledge Synthesis:  How Advanced Learners Used the Web to Construct Knowledge about Climate Change Behavior This is an excellent piece...

The Hidden Metal in Ghalib’s Heart

The Hidden Metal in Ghalib’s Heart

Mirza Ghalib, was a celebrated poet who lived in Delhi in the 19th century Delhi. He was as famous for his wit and defiance of conventions as he was for his verses. He mostly wrote ghazals—a form of lyric poetry built of rhyming couplets, each standing alone yet...

Bad poetry time: Clerihews

Just when you thought I had run through all the bad poetry I can spew (see here for my palindromic poems) here is another set of poems I had all but forgotten about. A few years ago I got hooked into writing Clerihews. For the uninitiated: The clerihew is a bit of...

A long view of knowledge

I should really visit Salon.com more often. Every time I go there I find something interesting, challenging and thought provoking. My recent foray there led me to a book review written by Laura Miller (The road to Wikipedia). Miller reviews "Reinventing Knowledge:...

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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