Monkey to Macbook – The expedited progression of the human race

Within the past 200,000 years, modern humans began to appear. Though it took thousands of years to get to the Industrial Revolution, since then, technology has grown exponentially. In fact, the majority of new breakthroughs in technology have occurred within the past 250 years. Compared to the span of human existence, this time period is fractional, and it goes to show the rapid changes made in the technology sector. 

In 1942, the first modern digital computer was built, and it weighed over 700 pounds. This machine was called the Atanasoff–Berry computer, or ABC. This machine was built to compute calculations with up to 29 variables, and it performed one operation every 15 seconds. Fast forward only 80 years to 2022, when Apple released their new Macbook Air. This laptop barely weighs 3 pounds and can perform millions of computations per second. It has a 1080p camera and has configurable storage up to 2T. Not even at 1% of the weight of the ABC, the Macbook Air can do so much more, and only within 80 years of development too. What the ABC could do then, the Apple Watch can do now. The progress has been extremely rapid in the last few years, and that leads me to stop and wonder: Will we hit a roadblock soon? Will there be no more changes left to make? What’s next in the future of technology?

Every couple of years, humans make incredible progress in the technological world. In the last 2,000 years, technology has advanced exponentially. When we imagine the future, we think of robots, advanced technologies, and even a cyberpunk-esque environment. The 1985 classic film, Back to the Future, got a lot right about modern technology, but it was also quite ambitious with some predictions. For example, the flying car, hoverboard, and the sleep-inducing alpha rhythm generator are all inventions that don’t exist today. On the other hand, the power lacing shoes, drones, and biometric devices are examples of technology that do exist now. Now while some of these technologies might never exist, one can’t help but wonder, which ones will? In the 20th century, the idea of the future was very metallic, robotic, and monochromatic. Now when we imagine the future, we imagine AI, big cities, and advanced tech in every aspect of our lives. So what does the future hold for us? 

I think what we currently envision for the future is only partially accurate. Just like in Back to the Future, only some of the technologies actually came to be. While we have an idea of what the future holds, part of it is shrouded in uncertainty, and it won’t be something we’ll be able to predict. Our future technological advancements primarily depend on what we need, and that need could change with multiple factors, like climate change, overpopulation, and etc. Artificial intelligence wasn’t a larger concept until the last couple of years, so it was never in the predictions for future technologies until recently. Now that it has become such a widespread topic, we think of it as the ‘next big thing.’ So while we can have some idea about what the future holds for us, we can’t fully predict what it has in store. Maybe civilization will never have a need for flying cars, or maybe we might need to develop technology to live underwater. Who knows?

Sources:

https://theconversation.com/what-was-the-first-computer-122164#:~:text=The%20first%20mechanical%20computer%2C%20The,computer%20we%20all%20use%20today.&text=The%20ABC%20weighed%20over%20700,had%20small%20capacitors%20on%20it. 

https://www.vulture.com/2014/12/which-back-to-the-future-ii-tech-is-closest.html