Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Technology

On Wednesday I went to a meeting, while there a guy showed me a video on his laptop, it consisted of a blue car on one of those rolling road thingies, with water pouring out of a pipe and spilling over the car onto the floor. So what you say, well you see it was all done totally on the computer. No video footage, just computer graphics, and it was damm good!
This got me thinking yesterday, how far we have come technology wise.
Homo erectus appeared around 2.2 million years (it's claimed). Man as we know him Homo sapiens sapiens, was much later, only about 130.000 years ago. For thousands of years nothing much changed, ok we invented the wheel (and some are still trying to re-invent it) but by and large nothing much happened. Then we had the industrial revolution, from the late 1700's man started switching from manual-labour-based economy towards machine-based manufacturing. This in turn led to the industrial revolution proper, with canals, steam engines etc etc.
Where is this going you ask? well it's simple really.
Just over a hundred years ago, The Wright brothers were "flying" at Kity Hawk, the first ever manned aircraft (there are disputed claims), people had gas lighting, and generally rode around in carriages pulled by horses. Big machines were powered by steam, and an ocean crossing was a perilous adventure. Jump forward a hundred years, everybody has a car, Atlantic flights are commonplace and surprisingly safe, man has walked on the moon (again disputed). We have home computers that even 50 years would have taken up several office blocks to do the same job, (your mobile phone has more computing power than than Neil Armstrongs Luna lander had) Spotty 15 year olds are writing viruses and programs that in WW2 would have cracked the Inigma coding machine faster than you can say knife!
If all this can happen in just a hundred years, whats going to happen in the next hundred?
Wayne

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