TUBACHRIS85 wrote:Joe Baker wrote:
Because you are so young, you've only seen a tiny slice of history, and it's understandable that you don't realize how quickly technology has been advancing, but believe me IT IS!!
I was not denying that there has been significant advances, and in no way have I thought the world has been like "this" since the freakin big bang. I'm just asking this, because there appears to have been a slow down in pace by comparison to the past history. I mean yea, we have small mp3's that I can eat by accident, but nothing revolutionary, such as personal computers by comparison has come out. I mean the kind of technology that really changes life styles and the way things are done. Please, I am not THAT ignorant that I dont know the technology of the past.
-tubachris
I know exactly what you mean. We still have to sit down in front of a computer screen and use a keyboard for our computing purposes. this method of input and output has remained virtually unchanged for 20 years. Sure hardware has gotten better and faster and different, but not so much so that it transcends the barriers of our current equipment (on a large scale).
The internal combustion engine running on fossil fuels remains king in transportation. This invention is fundamentally the same as it was 100 years ago. The only things that have changed are manufacturing procedures and materials, and all the fancy doo dads we tack on the engines. These things make the engines run more smoothly and more efficiently but really make no difference in the fundamental function of the technology.
Small victories lead up to large ones, and there have been a lot of small technological victories in the past 20 years, but I do agree with TUBACHRIS85 when he says there have been very few large technological advancements in that time period.
Right now, we are running on old technology. MP3's have revolutionized the music industry in recent times, but they were invented in 1997. That is nine years ago. CDs were invented in the late 1960's, came into common use in the 90s and now are still the predominant media choice for saleable music. Our computers are made of technology devised 20 to 30 years ago. Sure things have gotten smaller, better and faster, but the basic technology remains the same.
To sum up this very lengthy post, I would say that there definately needs to be (and probably will be) some very interesting technological advances in the next few years, and I am excited. While our parent's generation has seen a lot of change over their lifetimes, we haven't yet. I would say that its about time.