I was talking to my co-blogger David Creemer the other day about how I thought the single most valuable piece of technology created in the era of the personal computer was the clipboard. Copy and Paste is the an essential staple of countless workflows, and it's by far one of the most consistent and reliable ways to share data across applications.
But then sharing this with some friends at work, we talked about the more recent past. What technologies have changed your life in the past 10 or so years? Broadband is number one for me. I've been blessed in that I've gone to school and worked at places with high-speed, always on connections. But until about 8 years ago, I relied on dial-up at home. It used to be faster to drive into work and copy large files down to my computer there than to attempt to download them over my dial-up connection.
And the second big game-changer in the last 10 years is wireless. This coupled with a laptop computer and always-on high-spped broadband has fundamentally changed the way I interact with the computer. Using the computer used to be a batch process: turn it on, boot it up, connect to the internet, do some tasks, shut it down. Now it's always available, always on. Looking up some info, checking email, or IMing a friend is as easy to do as picking up the laptop from the coffee table in front of me. (or more likely, just looking down onto my lap, as it's there most of the time now).
Basically what happened was the cost of internet connectivity has dropped to practically nothing. And when I say cost, I mean several things: monetary of course, but also time, convenience, accessibility, speed, reliablity... really any metric you can measure.
So what's next? Well, I think the desktop -» laptop transition that has happened over the past 10 years will repeat in a laptop -» mobile transition over the next 10. I have seen the future, and it is something that looks a lot like the iPhone. Now it's not just freedom of connectivity at home or work. It's practically anywhere I am. And that's a powerful thing.
But then sharing this with some friends at work, we talked about the more recent past. What technologies have changed your life in the past 10 or so years? Broadband is number one for me. I've been blessed in that I've gone to school and worked at places with high-speed, always on connections. But until about 8 years ago, I relied on dial-up at home. It used to be faster to drive into work and copy large files down to my computer there than to attempt to download them over my dial-up connection.
And the second big game-changer in the last 10 years is wireless. This coupled with a laptop computer and always-on high-spped broadband has fundamentally changed the way I interact with the computer. Using the computer used to be a batch process: turn it on, boot it up, connect to the internet, do some tasks, shut it down. Now it's always available, always on. Looking up some info, checking email, or IMing a friend is as easy to do as picking up the laptop from the coffee table in front of me. (or more likely, just looking down onto my lap, as it's there most of the time now).
Basically what happened was the cost of internet connectivity has dropped to practically nothing. And when I say cost, I mean several things: monetary of course, but also time, convenience, accessibility, speed, reliablity... really any metric you can measure.
So what's next? Well, I think the desktop -» laptop transition that has happened over the past 10 years will repeat in a laptop -» mobile transition over the next 10. I have seen the future, and it is something that looks a lot like the iPhone. Now it's not just freedom of connectivity at home or work. It's practically anywhere I am. And that's a powerful thing.
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