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The Evolution of Technology - Part 1 πŸ“°β˜ŽπŸ“Ί

The Evolution of Technology - Part 1 πŸ“°β˜ŽπŸ“Ί

Throughout history specific inventions changed the structure of society.

Christian Flagg's avatar
Christian Flagg
Jun 23, 2021

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The Evolution of Technology - Part 1 πŸ“°β˜ŽπŸ“Ί
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The 21st Century

At the turn of the 21st century many thought the cosmic calendar would bring with it the end of the world.

Westerners in particular, -who enjoyed several decades of post war economic prosperity, were haunted by the coming year 2000. The great physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton even speculated that the world would end with the year 2000 (Although adjustments brought that number to the year 2060).

They thought the modern computer (many of which had been shorthand coded to include only the last two digits of the year β€œ19XX”) would cause a global disruption in communication, financial markets, and transportation and logistic networks.

Instead, the final 24 hours concluded a millennium of human accomplishment, and a century of murderous global conflict.

β€œAs police throughout the world secured emergency bunkers for themselves, the TIME magazine and Time Inc. information-technology staff set up a generator-powered β€œwar room” in the basement of the Time & Life Building, filled with computers and equipment ready to produce the magazine in case of a catastrophic breakdown of electricity and communications,” explained then-assistant managing editor Howard Chua-Eoan, in a note that appeared in the magazine’sΒ commemorative 1/1/00 issue.

The Growth of the Internet

Rather than the end of the world, the turn of the century brought with it the seedlings of what would blossom into mighty technology company behemoths.

Seeds like:

  • Microsoft’s Windows Operating System in 95’,

  • Google’s PageRank algorithm in 96’,

  • IBM’s DiskOnKey (the first flash drive) in 2000,

  • Skype’s web enabled telecommunication in 2003,

  • Facebook’s the Wall, a new way to socialize, in 2004,

  • And Apple’s iPhone, the foundation for the modern smartphone, in 2007

It brought a whirlwind of headlines, flashy social feeds, and exhaustive disruptive notifications vying for our attention.

For someone like me, -a 25 year old who barely experienced life without β€œthe device”, it’s hard to understand just how dramatic these changes are.

Above all, the turn of the century brought with it speed.

Today everything from communication to transportation, and specifically innovation, -everything is speeding up.

In the last twenty years the technology sector has overtaken global markets. Below you can see the top ten largest publicly traded companies by market capitalization. Combined, these ten companies make up more than 10% of the global economy.

PwC ranked the largest publicly-traded companies by their market capitalization in U.S. dollars. Sector classification is based on the FTSE Russell Industry Classification Benchmark.

The World is Speeding Up

It’s easy to forget that in our jet-setting, instant messaging, global community, that for most of human history people were stationary. The world wasn’t quiet as big as it is today.

Life moved at a slower pace.

For example, up until about 200 years ago the majority of transportation was powered by either animals or the wind. It wasn’t until 1818 that the first steam powered vessel, the Savannah, crossed the Atlantic.

In the late 1800s, a trip from New York to Chicago was four weeks by stagecoach.

A few decades later, by copying British railroad technology, the United States began outfitting the northeast with an expansive railroad network. With trains, the travel time was reduced to ~four days.

By the time the commercial airplane industry reached some stability in the mid 1960’s, about 100 million passengers had taken to the sky and the trip from New York to Chicago shrunk to just 4 hours!


News Travels Fast as Lightning

Where did people get their news before Tiktok and FacebookπŸ˜…?

The first newspapers gained popularity in Germany in the 16th Century. And radio broadcasting started commercially in 1920.

And while television was invented shortly after in 1927, it didn’t gain popularity until a few years after the end of World War II in the late 1940’s. And that’s just for large audiences.

A 1609 title page of the GermanΒ Relation, the world's first newspaper (first published in 1605)[1]

In 1830, Samuel Morse integrated the Morse code in telegraphy technology whichΒ revolutionized long-distance communication. In 1844, Morse sent his first telegraph message.

The telegraph was then quickly replaced by the telephone which was invented by Scottish Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.

Alexander Graham Bell in New York in 1892

It wasn’t until the late 1950’s, until after the world wars, that global competition would drive one of the most disruptive technologies the world had ever seen.

In response to the Soviet’s launching Sputnik in 1957, President Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958.

(D)ARPA would go on to develop the predecessor to the most important technology of the modern era.

The Arpanet, which started with just four computer terminals in 1969, was decommissioned in 1990 afterΒ partnerships with the telecommunication and computer industryΒ had assured private sector expansion and future commercialization of an expanded world-wide network, known as theΒ Internet.


Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Today we live in the β€œInformation Age”. We have access to information that would confound people just one lifetime ago.

We are living in a modern miracle.

Dr. Michio Kaku, the famous Physicist best known for cofounding string field theory, has been quoted on the topic,

β€œToday, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969, when it placed two astronauts on the moon.”

Those computers also cost about 3.5 million each and weighed the same as a small car.

In theory, we have the equivalent of the library of Alexandria or the library of Congress in our pocket. We can ask any question and instantly receive a multitude of answers.

Our cellphones are more than just telephones, and they’re more than just computers too.

They’re a fax machine (sms), a GPS, a voice recorder, a digital watch, a portable music player, the worlds greatest encyclopedia, a radio, a video game console, a portable television, a film and video camera, video conference, and they hold processing power equivalent to at least 20 million dollars 30 years ago.

Each of these devices would have been purchased separately just 20 years ago.

All this kind of makes you wonder…

  • How is all of this possible?

  • What inventions have had the greatest impact in history?

  • And what inventions matter today?

To answer these questions we need to review history. And we need to review what happened before recorded history.

For more on the evolution of technology and technology today, check out Part 2 next week!

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The Evolution of Technology - Part 1 πŸ“°β˜ŽπŸ“Ί
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