Thursday, February 26, 2009

Technology and the Future

How has technology changed in the past 10 years?  I bought my first mobile phone in 1998.  It was a cutting edge Nokia with text messaging, games, all the bells and whistles.  Today, I use my phone as an mp3 player, camera, internet, and sometimes to make phone calls.  In 1998, I didn’t even know what an mp3 was.

Thinking over how technology has changed in my generation, has caused me to think about how it will further change in my lifetime.  As with mp3s taking the place of CDs, I am expecting some sort of replacement for DVDs.  I would guess that by 2020, we will be carrying devices with technology we don’t even know about today.  I would guess that we will have a digital video format that will make DVDs obsolete.

It is hard for me to remember how things were when we weren’t so connected.  When traveling from one location to another, no one could contact me until I reached my destination.  Today, instead of “call home when you get there”, it is “text me while you travel.”  Today, we feel lost when we forget our phone when running an errand.

In my opinion, the convenience outweighs the negatives.  We are after all, still able to turn the phone off.