Reflecting on the rate of technological change

The change in tech throughout the generations is amazing.

Lately, as my oldest child started Primary School i’ve reflected back on how her life was different to mine and the thing that sticks out is tech.

I am part of the last generation to consciously know life before the internet. When the internet arrived I remember my father taking my sister and I to his office to “have a go on it”. Each of us bought a list of URL’s we had gotten from magazines and newspapers. We went onto Yahoo. My sister and I took turns with our addresses, it taking a long time to work out how to search and a long time for results to come back. Exciting websites with spinning skull gifs I remember.

The internet was shortly installed at home. We paid by the hour. $2 an hour. We had a 28k modem but being in the country, 18k was considered great. When it rained it would be slower. When the phone line pit flooded, slower again.

Decades later by daughter was born, into a house with a 100mbps HFC NBN connection.

3 years later my son arrived into a world where he was grown up giving voice commands to google. He asks what the weather and temperature is going to be and then, sometimes asks to play Get Lucky by Daft Punk. All before he heads to kinder.

They’ve been living with a gigabit (1000mbps) internet connection for years and now, going their intense education years, they enter them on the sunrise of world changing AI technology both of them having never used a search engine as we knew it.

Exciting times ahead.