We hear it all the time, that the pace of technological change today is faster than ever before. But what does that really mean, and why does it matter?
It means that if you were born in 1920, technologies in your life changed slowly. Think electricity, cars, telephones. At the time, these were huge innovations. But they took over 40 years to reach 3 out of 4 households in the U.S.
Compare this to the experience of someone born just 50 years later. Digital technologies like social media took only 11 years to reach 7 of 10 Americans, and smartphones took even less time. This shift to software platforms has meant that today’s tech scales further and faster than 1920s technologies ever could.
Yet the policies, laws, and systems we need to protect and guide us haven’t kept up. Our political, economic, and legal institutions were designed for a another time, one with different expectations for labor and privacy. It’s resulted in a growing gap between old-tech regulations and the ones we need to thrive in today’s digital world.
Azeem Azhar is someone who’s thought a lot about this. And his book, The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics, and Society provides a useful model for thinking about where we’ve come from, where we’re headed, and how to navigate these changes.
Episode Links
Ray Kurzweil
Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View podcast
CubeSat
The Manhattan Project
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
1981 Air Traffic Controllers' Strike
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
Horace Dediu
The Story of Work by Jan Lucassen
The Team
Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.
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