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…

Us in Flux: A conversation with Sarah Pinsker

Us in Flux: A conversation with Sarah Pinsker

The Center for Science and the Imagination at ASU has a new series called Us in Flux. Every two weeks they publish a (super-short) short story that explores "themes of community, collaboration, and collective imagination in response to transformative events." They...

MAET virtual help desk

Theresa Hamilton & Amy Gracik are two of our Technology Interns in Education. They are now part of a pilot project to offer software technology support to students in our MAET program. This help-desk available online at http://groups.google.com/group/maetsupport....

Using eclipses to see

Let me start with two questions: First, what is the shape of the Earth? And two, what shapes does the sun cast on the ground when filtered through the leaves of a tree? Of course we know the answer to the first question. The pictures from space show clearly this...

Looking for IT in India

A few days ago Jack Schwille, assistant dean for international studies in education, sent an email out to all faculty and students at the college of education announcing a talk by me titled: "Help Punya find IT in India?" This presentation was to be fifth in the...

A pome a day

Greg Casperson is a graduate student in our Ed Psy & Ed Tech program. He has been engaged, over the past few months, in the most interesting experiment. He carefully selects and posts to his website one poem every day! Greg's RSS feed has become one of the first...

By Design & by Chance: New Publication

By Design & by Chance: New Publication

Dinner in Bangalore with some of the keymembers of the MSU-APU partnership * One of the highlights of my career at MSU was the partnership we built between the College of Education and the Azim Premji University / Azim Premji Foundation....

Arizona in black & white

Arizona in black & white

Over the past two years in Arizona I have had the opportunity to indulge in my love for photography. Recently I felt the need to play with Adobe Sparks - and what better way to learn a new tool than to use it to create a photo album. Enjoy.

Blogging for the iPhone

I have been playing with an iTouch for the past few days and have have been quite impressed. What bothered me somewhat though was that my website (something I have spent hours designing) didn't morph itself as gracefully as I would have liked into this new interface....

Failure has to be an option

I just read this great interview with Diane Ravitch on Slate.com (The wrong stuff). Diane Ravitch started out under George H.W. Bush as a strong supporter for NCLB (and all that goes with it, educational testing, school choice, charter schools etc. etc. etc.)....

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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