Sometimes it’s easy to forget what an amazing modern world we live in. Even if I think back just 10 years ago, it blows my mind how much has changed. Just in technology, even.
In 2002:
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Nokia was the largest cellphone manufacturer. Their top selling model that year was the Nokia 6100. I actually had one of these as a loaner phone once. At the time I was carrying this more modest model - a Qualcomm QCP-2700, complete with green screen.
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Tablets as we know them today didn’t exist. Oh sure there were primitive early tablets - Palm Pilots and the Newton come to mind. But they had as much in common with today’s tablets as a horse does with a Ferrari.
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HP was the leading computer manufacturer that year - following their purchase of Compaq. The same HP that almost sold it’s computer division late last year.
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Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist, and the best site on the web for tech news was still Slashdot. Wikipedia had just opened the year before and was still seriously lacking content.
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Mac OS X 10.1 was released that year, and I spent all summer lusting over the Titanium Powerbook G4 with it’s PowerPC processor running at a blazing 800 megahertz and a huge 40gb drive.
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If you wanted to read a book, you bought a paper book. e-Book readers, while the existed, were clunky and difficult to use, and titles were mostly restricted to technical publications. Nothing like the Kindle, Nook, iPad and other readers.
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Using the Internet on a mobile device, if it was available at all, was extremely limited. Remember WAP? I remember being amazed in college that I could use my phone to check the scores of other games while I was at an Auburn game.
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Wanted to find your way around? You had a map or directions. GPSs as we know them today didn’t exist, and certainly weren’t integrated into phones.
Contrast that to today. The phone in my pocket is more powerful, has more storage, than that laptop I spent a whole summer lusting over, and can be used to surf the web just as well as any computer. The tablet I carry with me has access to a whole library of books, can connect wirelessly to the Internet almost anywhere, and can be held with as single hand. If I ever get lost, I can pull up a map on my phone that pinpoints my location to within a few yards of my area, and can give me turn by turn voice directions to get where I’m going.
Facebook and Twitter connect millions of people together. I can even connect to the Internet on my laptop _in an airplane at 35,000 feet! _Downstairs, I have a 60” widescreen TV that’s 1.5” thick and weighs so little that I could mount it on the wall.
Every time I hear people complaining about how things suck, I’m reminded of this video. Because everything really is amazing right now. We are living in an amazing futuristic world full of fascinating advancements that are are happening all the time. And what is most amazing of all is how quickly we got here. The world of tech between now and 10 years ago are so different.
What will the world of 10 years from now be like?
