The world businesses operate in changes quicker every day. Is there any reason to wonder, though, why the rapid pace? No. The foundation for technology driven change has been laid and technology users are now empowered. Cray’s 1964 CDC 6600 was dubbed the first super computer and sold for $8 million. In today’s dollars that would be roughly $59 million. Your smart phone can do more than that supercomputer.
The power of technology that was prohibitively expensive and lacked the refinement of the past four decades is so readily available one does not think of the power of the instrument in their hands. With this much technology in millions of hands, there is no reason to wonder about the rapid pace of technology-driven change. Look at what changed to bring us to today, essentially technology-driven change has a foundation in change.
The pace will not slow down. Supercomputers today are now measured in petaflops or 10 to the 15th power. While hard to even comprehend today, petaflops were not even thought of in 1964; the measure simply didn’t exist. While we walk around with 1960s computing power in our pockets, I doubt if in forty years millions of people will walk around with devices with the capacity of today’s supercomputers. It is more likely they will have connected devices with access to supercomputers.
Those connections will be far better than the wireless interfaces of today. The connections, how the info and computing power are accessed, may also be the key and possibly the thing people will pay for and use to increase their social standing. Perhaps instead of ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’ people will say ‘it’s not what you know but how you know’ but one thing is certain, technology will continue to change the world.
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