Technology: Past, Present, and Future

The rate at which technology is advancing these days never ceases to astound me, I mean look at smart phones. Two years ago they were slow, buggy, and very few people had them. Today you are practically holding a fully functional computer in the palm of your hand. I decided to take a look back through history age by age and look at the progression of technology starting at the stone age and working up to today.

Stone Age: Most technologies in this time were focused on things like hunting, shelter, and survival in general. Some examples of things that were discovered in this time are fire, stone tools and weapons, early stages of mining technologies.

Copper and Bronze Age: During this time advancements were made in agriculture and also animal domestication. Also the art of smelting ore to create metal tools, weapons, and other implements became common.

Iron Age: The Iron age was marked mostly by the use of Iron (imagine that) ore as opposed to bronze, copper, or tin for tools and weapons. Also it was here that the earliest stages of written language began to form.

Medieval  Era: While it is generally thought that during this time the world took a step back in the real of technology this is not completely the case. Many discoveries such as mechanical clocks, spectacles, rudders for ships, horseshoes, plate armor, crossbows, trebuchets, and many more were either invented or the foundations for them being invented were laid during this era.

Renaissance: This stage of history is most notably marked by the advances made in areas such as art, music, and literature, the earliest form of a moveable type printing press was invented. New ways of painting and sculpting started being used, new types of music started to be created, and advances in engineering technology allowed buildings to be built in ever new and decorative ways.

Age of Exploration: The invention of a ship able to sail on the ocean was what started the Age of exploration that began to connect parts of the world to each other.

Industrial Revolution: This age, as most of you already know, was marked by things such as textile manufacturing, mining, metallurgy, stream engines, factories, etc. This is the time when new technologies really began to pop up everywhere and old ones were improved on greatly.

19 ^th Century: This time was marked by massive advances in transportation, construction, and communications. Steam engines began to be used on boats and trains, the light-bulb was invented, and mass production became more and more common.

20 ^th Century: Technology at this point was progressing so fast that it would take forever to list out things but everything that was developed in the 19 ^th century was greatly improved upon during this time. Some of the top inventions/technologies were:

1)   Electrification

2)   Automobile

3)   Airplane

4)   Water supply and Distribution

5)   Electronics

6)   Radio and Television

7)   Mechanized agriculture

8)   Computers

9)   Telephone

10) Air Conditioning and Refrigeration

11)  Highways

12)  Spacecraft

13)  Internet

14)  Imaging

15)  Household appliances

16)  Health Technologies

17)  Petroleum and Petrochemical Technologies

18)  Laser and Fiber Optics

19)  Nuclear technologies

20) Materials science

Today: You are very familiar with the technologies of today, the advances in all areas continue at astounding rates especially in the realms of electronics.  Things such as Broadband Internet, LED lights, particle physics, superstring theory, solar cells, superconductivity, space technologies…the list is endless.

So my question for you is what do you think technology will look like in the future? In 100 years do you think our 4G smart phones will look like nothing more than spears made out of bronze? Leave a comment about what you think technology will look like in the future, whether that means 5 years from now or 500.