Look around you. How many things do you see that didn’t exist ten years ago? A 3D LED television? Smartphones? Digital Books? MP3 players? High-powered games consoles…. The list goes on. While I can’t help but be curious about what our homes may look like ten years from now, I wonder how many of these innovations have become ‘essential’ in our everyday lives.
I have compiled a list of ten semi-new technologies that I consider to be some of the most critical to our generation’s survival on earth!!! While we could all still physically survive without the following, how many of them do you deem essential? In no particular order:
- Wikipedia – The worlds largest reference source, Wikipedia contains almost everything there is to know about everything! While some people consider the open-source nature of the database to be inaccurate, almost everyone I know used it as some point in their University Thesis!
- YouTube – What did people even used to do? How did they spend hours watching videos of funny goats or cats? How did they listen to their favourite pop stars latest release?
- Google – Undoubtedly one of the most powerful companies in the world, Google has some serious weight in the Tech Industry. A business can be made or broken by their position in search rankings and the adjective ‘search’ is fast being replaced by the giant itself ‘google’! How did people find things out before Google?…. What do you mean they had to look things up in a book?!
- GPS Maps – Fast becoming an essential gadget for any smartphone. My kids generation will laugh at the thought of using a map and compass. Gone are the days of taking hours to find a street or getting lost on the hills.
- Facebook – Can you remember the world before a wall or a timeline existed? How did you keep in contact with old friends or stalk your enemies?! Facebook has enabled us to know everything about everyone without having to make the effort of catching up! We literally have access to the archives of the lives of all our friends and the click of a mouse!
- Smartphones – From shopping at your fingertips to email/video/text messages. Sites like Titan Bingo have made it possible to play bingo games or place bets from anywhere in the world with a signal! I genuinely think that our children will find a world where we are not constantly contactable impossible to imagine.
- Skype – It is extremely difficult to imagine a world where we can’t video chat with family and friends around the world. Skype has truly changed how we interact and communicate… and probably saved thousands of marriages and relationships in the process!
- Amazon – A colossal enterprise, which catalogues almost anything that you could ever want. Customer reviews that allow you to make informed decisions and a basis for price benchmarking. Amazon has created a fantastic platform of price transparency.
- Twitter – Imagine a world where we couldn’t track our favourite celebrity or check what topics of conversation are trending worldwide?! Did anyone even know what character the hashtag was a decade ago? Thought Not…
- Digital Cameras – I was watching Downton Abbey the other day (does anyone else watch this??) and had to laugh when the photographer ignited the gunpowder flash whilst taking a family photograph. Not only do we have portable cameras, but we have digital cameras. We can take hundreds of photos anywhere, anytime. Chances are, anywhere you go there is a chance of being caught on camera. From topless sunbathers to thugs and burglars… nobody is safe! Jokes aside, digital photography has enabled us to create and capture images that could only be seen in paintings a decade ago!
What else do you consider to have changed the world in the last decade? What is going to be the biggest change in the coming decade?