The evolution of ideas

One of the odd things about teaching is how it does seem to place life in astounding perspective. I teach technology to college students, and -- though the class isn't centered on the history of computers -- I often take a minute or two to place things into a historical context. Inevitably, when I do so, it makes me feel my age. It also gets me to thinking about how times have changed.

When I teach about the formation of companies like Microsoft or Apple, those things occurred around the time I was born. In my lifetime, I have witnessed the death of 8-tracks, vinyl records, audio cassettes, and compact discs. I can recall dial-up connections to the internet, and I can recall when the internet was more-or-less text-only. I began a blog in my college years (and even gained some notoriety for it), but the term "blogger" hadn't even been invented yet -- I was just an online writer.

I was around when the nation still looked forward to receiving 500 channels of television, and I was around when we received them and realized there was still nothing worth watching. I graduated in 1996 with a degree in broadcast communications. I had learned how to wire and synchronize all the equipment in an analog television station; a year later, the digital revolution took place and nearly everything I learned had suddenly been rendered obsolete. Console televisions came in hefty wood (or simulated wood) cabinets and sat on the floor. Beta and VHS battled for supremacy. OnTV and SelecTV battled for supremacy. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray battled for supremacy.

In the late 1990s, I was mocked by my friends when I bought a cellphone, because none of them could fathom why I (or anyone) would need such a device. Around five years later, many of those same friends mocked me for owning such an old cellphone, because we all had to have the latest and greatest. I've seen the rise and fall of pagers and FAX machines, AOL and Netscape, PowerBooks and Newtons, digital watches and Swatch watches.

The Christmas when we received an Atari 2600 (with Pac-Man) stands out as one of my favorite childhood memories. The day I cashed out an old life insurance policy to buy a Nintendo 64 stands out as one of the most frivolous wastes of money I've ever done (fun though).

I remember the advent of MTV, as well as the almost uncelebrated moment when VH1 came into being. I also recall when MTV and VH1 dropped their respective nonstop music video formats in favor of teen oriented fare (though to this day they deny who their target audience was). The arrival of early rappers like Run DMC and The Fat Boys seemed a logical musical progression from soul/R&B, but the sudden, violent transformation of the genre seemed to come out of nowhere. I can recall when music wasn't sampled, synthesized, lip-synced, or auto-tuned.

All these realizations can make one feel old, and it can make one feel somewhat jaded and cynical when it comes to embracing new technologies. But in a sense I am optimistic. Almost every technological breakthrough I listed seemed -- at the time -- like the pinnacle of what we could achieve. And yet the bar has been raised higher time and time again. It seems like every failure (the Lisa, the Newton, the Cube -- all from Apple) paved the way for something greater (the Macintosh, the iPad, the iMac -- all from Apple).

I actually like it that what was state-of-the-art when I was a kid is now quaint if not old fashioned. What has me concerned, however, is that some of the technology has been stagnant. The space shuttle program that evolved in the 1970s never quite got updated, and this year it will shut down forever. The large hadron collider -- designed in an era when the technology required to operate it hadn't even been invented yet -- will shut down this year, too. There has been no manned mission to Mars. There have been no flying cars. Disneyland's Monorail never quite proved viable outside the confines of the Happiest Place on Earth.

If these stalled technologies really are just steps to something better, we appear to have found ourselves immobilized. I've become convinced that mankind no longer evolves physically (whether we once did is another debate for another day). Instead, mankind grows technologically. If we are to better ourselves, we have to keep developing new gadgets to make our lives better. If we don't, then we risk becoming obsolete as a species, and we'll have to make room for something else to take our place.