In your earliest memory of your home, what electronics or communication devices did you have? TV? Radio? Phone? Was it a party line? For me it was one 19inch black-and-white tv with access to 7 regular channels and a few UHF broadcasts, a stereo/radio with record player and the landline phone. How about the family car? One or two? Now think of what you have today. We’ve gone from a coat hanger coming out of the TV to almost every person I know having multiple TVs with more channels and options than one could ever watch, their own safer, faster, more efficient computerized car and a dedicated cell phone, if not a smart phone with more capabilities than a Star Trek communicator combined with the Jetson’s tele-screens. If you were a child before the onset of the computer age you have lived in an amazing transition during your lifetime and watched the greatest advance in the human evolution. And the show has just begun.
For better or worse, technology has spurred on a more rapid change than anything we could have predicted. Well, most of us would have predicted… but I haven’t met George Lucas or Elon Musk to discuss what they see coming.
Looking at history, there have been many inventions that have pushed our civilization to change, but none as rapidly as what we’ve seen in the past 20-30 years and with every invention or advance in technology we are propelled forward at an exponentially faster rate. From the discovery of fire to the wheel took thousands of years and thousands more to reach the Industrial Age. It was the industrial onset that really got the proverbial engine started and fully illustrates how the space between advances happen more rapidly. A major discovery, electricity, took 50 years to put it in half the homes in the country. Not thousands. Slow by today’s standard, but its use in almost all aspects of life radically changed the way society functioned. From the light bulb to the refrigerator, to the radio and the TV, electricity became an integral part of our lives. I mean since then, when the power goes out, we’re seriously limited. The car and the telephone were big ones, but the comparative roll out was measured in decades and the changes far less dramatic than what we see today. Now, it seems in the time between birthdays, new technologies can change the way we live in a blink. And it can be hard to deal with so much changing so fast. Did you, or do you, embrace it? Or do you begrudgingly accept fate? I bear hugged it in initially, but after so many years of watching the tech explosion, I started to wonder if it will ever slow down? Think about it. What could slow this evolution? Is it a runaway train? An avalanche? Or the Enterprise hitting warp speed? I’ll opt for the spaceship over the others because at least there’s an intelligence guiding us to boldly go where no man has gone before.
So what does this mean to all of us? It means besides witnessing change every day; we are in fact in a massive societal shift. And when we were born during this shift determines both the perspective and the effect the change has had in your life.
Picture a city. Let’s call it Techopolis. This sprawling Mecca expands daily, growing both wider and higher, in all directions, with new, unrecognizable structures popping up like a time lapse video of flowers blooming on top of the garden that grew before it. Those born before Techopolis existed, lived on the flatter ground surrounding it. We can see for miles, examining our own history, remembering a simpler time where the land, towns and smaller cities changed at a slower pace. From this point we can also see into the city, an ever-expanding metropolis of technology between only a single generation.
If you lived before the computer age, it’s easier to resist the draw of Techopolis if you choose to. Some choose to live with only the most essential technologies, however it’s nearly impossible to avoid unless you go completely off the grid or you let someone else handle all your tech issues allowing you to exist in the modern society. For those of us who are adjusting and would like to continue to live in the current world, it would seem embracing change to a moderate degree and finding a balance in your choices will bring greater flexibility to your life without getting overwhelmed. And to some degree most of us have chosen to at least move into the outskirts of the city.
Those born after this change live within Techopolis. The later you were born, the deeper in the city you exist and are subjected to the shift to a greater degree and often without choice. How will they possibly survive? Well, our species is really quite amazing. Being born into it, the younger ones know their way around the city better and find the new structures or areas more easily, taking on the challenges as a natural part of life. And they do it faster. Just as we changed with the albeit slower roll out of inventions in our earlier lives, the youth prove human adaptability is alive and well, taking advantage of the advances and teaching or helping those of us who are not always ready to embrace the change. If you haven’t had that moment of humility where you asked a kid for help with your technology, don’t worry it’s coming.
The analogy I describe is based more on perspective than actual structure. I was born outside the city, but Techopolis beginnings were evident before I finished high school. In college, it quickly became part of the education landscape and I saw the beginnings of the city from the inside. A necessity, but only in some arenas then, where almost all arenas today are created by tech, for tech… until death do us tech. In all, I’ve enjoyed learning new things to enhance the living experience, but while I live with quite a bit of modern advances, sometimes it’s moving too fast to keep up. My career in healthcare, this webpage and having children all force me to adapt to something new on an almost daily basis. And I do my best to keep up.
So analogies aside, what did this change bring us? Above all, unlimited information and communication that can be accessed far faster than anything we imagined just twenty years ago. That’s literally a lot to take in. And there lies the challenge to our society. How can a species, yeah, you and me, who existed in such a stable environment, adjust to such rapid change? We just do. It’s just not easy. Change never is. It is, again, a credit to the human’s natural adaptability. And today, we see the younger generations setting the example of how to survive and thrive within the shift.
At the time of writing this, I still have school-aged children immersed in a technological ocean, adjusting on the fly to the new challenges with only a choice of learn it or lose pace with their generation. I also speak on a daily basis with a population of people who average 3/4 of century in age. From just 10 years ago, the number of seniors embracing technology has increased exponentially. Armed with a smartphone, an iPad, laptop or at least a brontosaurus-aged desktop computer, they find themselves using what pieces of this new evolving world work for them and improve their lives. The “live and learn thing” never really stops, does it?
Anyone willing to change deserves credit. The old dog-new tricks adage is at least partly true. But that’s where living in Techopolis is supposed to be easier and sometimes it is. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Uber and thousands of other advances have changed the way we approach any given day. On a family, friend, or business level, modern communication has made connecting to the people you want to far easier and readily available. Texting, FaceTime, internet phone calls and social media have made distance and other barriers, well, a thing of the past. And ready or not, it will evolve even more in the future. Maybe by the time you’re done reading this.
