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  • Writer's picturePhil Todd

Technology changes things more slowly than you think. Some things change, and some things don’t.

How many times do you see a sci-fi film that gets the dates wrong. We pass those fiction milestones milestones, and the world is largely the same. Yes, the detail changes. Compared to 1970 (50 years ago !!) :


  • We still have TV, though TVs are now big and flat and slightly interactive.

  • We still have cars with 4 wheels, though now they are more efficient, with different types of engine and little bit of automation.

  • We still have trains and city metro systems, though with automatic doors now.

  • Houses are the same (literally in most cases).


And so on. So in another 50 years’ time, in 2070, I suspect much of the world will look pretty familiar - the infrastructure of the world, the way we live. We won’t have ubiquitous flying cars, or everyday space travel to cities on Mars, or transporter beams etc.


Of course, the one thing that HAS changed is electronics, data, the internet. These things are enablers, allowing innovation and new things to become mainstream. In the next 50 years there will likely be a lot cleverer and possibly ubiquitous automation, and different ways to interact with the world and with each other. But the nuts and bolts of the world will be the same. It will look pretty much like today.


More radical change takes much much longer - centuries, not decades!

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