Will technology slow down?

It’s 10.44pm and though my mind is saying “Sleep” there is something that I wanted to blog about today and that is what will happen to technology this decade. Recent reports say that the growth of technological advancements will rapidly decline this decade. Let’s rewind ten years.

At the start of the year 2000 it was hardly what I would call the dark ages. Most houses had PC’s with the good old fashioned dial up Broadband (who here can remember the times when your internet would cut out when you had an incoming phone call or you could not connect to the internet if you had BT answer phone on!). Mobile phones were ever more common with text messaging becoming more and more popular some phones even had WAP! DVD’s replaced the VCR for good finally ending us saying “I’m just off to the video shop”. PC’s were clunky noisy devices that had around 20gig of memory, and only the posh people had laptops.

Then there was the internet. AltaVista led the way in terms of search engines, GeoCities allowed you to create websites with those magical “Under Construction” banners and for e-mail Hotmail led the way with their rather generous 5mb of space!

The home was also a place where we were enjoying a change in technology. The old base TV’s were slowly being replaced with larger models with 28″ being the most popular. LCD TV meant a much clearer picture and Sky TV was more in demand than ever. The digital camera became more popular too and soon the 1mp camera was breaking into the market. We were in heaven having the ability to have over 200 photos on a digital memory card!

So what changed?

• Playstation 3, the WII and Nintendo DS pushed the level of home gaming to a new level. Back in the 80’s it was Trivial Pursuit parties, now it’s WII nights.
• The Iphone changed the way we used phones forever.
• The Ipod killed off the mini-disc
• Blu Ray is the new DVD
• 3D/HD TV replaced LCD
• WIFI is the new broadband
• The 12mp camera and SLR are now standard
• Social Networking changed the internet forever
• Google became the most recognised logo in the world.

In summary technology got smaller and the world became more clustered and connected than ever before. Not since the invention of the telephone had we seen such technological advancements. We now even have a talking navigation device in our car that can tell us the way to Amarillo and in the comfort of the voice of one Homer Simpson.

So what does the new decade hold? Well personally I am in agreement with the sceptics, it has to slow down.
I can see Apple and Google still dominating the market. The Iphone will no doubt see more changes than a Man Utd strip (Rumour of a 4G coming in May seems accurate). Google will take the art of communicating to a higher level with their Google Wave and of course we will all be twittering about what were up to each second of the day.

Facebook, Twitter and Youtube will never be surpassed. They have become the grandparents of the internet; they found a gap and just went for it. I can see sites like Second Life becoming more and more popular as the technology advances. But as these gaps have been filled and the numbers of people hop on board the Twitter train it’s unlikely they are going to be replaced. In the early days of the internet it was all about trying out what was best for you and then if you did not like that simply moving on to another. That won’t happen with the likes of Facebook.

The only real advancement I can see is in the home. We can already pause and record live TV, we can watch shows we have missed on line so nothing really new will be coming there. As the sudden interest in technology slows down following the rapid rise in the Noughties we will soon realise that there is indeed a big wide world out there that we can explore from outside of that place we call home.

Sure technology means that we can mail, talk and even video each other from the comfort of our own homes yet the human instinct will still show that we are a race of people with emotions, a race of people that cannot live just with technology.

I’m off to bed now, my Blackberry, Iphone, Blu Ray disc, Flatscreen TV and PS3 are all switched off, all I can hear is the dripping sound of the rain on the street below…there is a also a cat that is running around like a banshee.

I guess I’ll put that on Twitvid.

Night all 🙂