Progress of Technology

If you read my column a couple of weeks ago, you’ll remember that I talked about the history of the personal computer, extending back into the 1970’s. But I’m only 10, so most of the things I talked about, I wasn’t around for. In fact, virtually the only computers I can remember are today’s powerful, intuitive machines.

So when I learned that, for instance, the original Macintosh had an eight-megahertz processor (hertz is the measure of how fast a processor is), I was blown away that, once upon a time, technology was like that. When you compare that to today’s machines with 2.7 gigahertz processors, you can see the progress.

Progress. There’s good and bad progress, there’s happy and sad progress, there’s all kinds of progress.

Now, what is bad and sad progress? It’s an interesting question. I guess that it could be considered as when new things turn out to have a negative effect. The people who created the invention are sad, and the users of the invention witness bad effects.

There is good and happy progress too. The people who developed X-Rays and MRIs must be so proud of the lives that their invention is saving. Another example: as I said above, the progress from yesterday’s technology to today’s is very good – it’s allowing so many more people to accomplish so many more things.

So what kind of progress will there be in the future? That’s an interesting question, so here’s an answer – from the perspective of a ten-year-old:

I can easily imagine the future being full of mobile devices like tablets and smartphones – notice I didn’t mention laptops or desktops. Like I said in my last article, we are moving into a “post-PC” era.

So what does the post-PC era mean? 2 things:

As mobile devices become more affordable, more and more people will be able to adopt them into their lives.
As mobile devices become more powerful, people who already own them will be able to use them more often for more things such as:
- Work- better word processing, presentation editing, etc. Also more options for integrating servers and such into the iPad to make connectivity and access easier.
- Connections- More/better ways to communicate with others. Better video chatting, messaging, and better (high quality sound) calls.

I, personally, will definitely love this. The ability to take powerful computers with you anywhere, so you can use them whenever you need them, sounds great to me!

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