EternityPCS News & Blog
Friday, November 4, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
Look at how much technology has changed in the last 100 years
Here is an excerpt from the article...Technology Revolutions:
The late Steve Jobs often referred to the "post-PC" world. And whenever he did that, our entire staff would get a bit nervous. After all, the name of this site happens to be PCWorld, and Steve Jobs was often right when he declared something toast (see: floppy disks, optical drives, FireWire, brick-and-mortar music stores, phones with buttons, and netbooks).
To test Jobs's "post-PC" proclamation, we decided to try a little experiment: We compiled the past seven years' worth of our 100 Best Products of the Year lists, pulled out the top 10 products selected each year, and set them side by side for comparison. (To run the experiment yourself, check out the "PCWorld 10 Best Products of the Year: 2005-2011" chart below.)
As it turns out, Jobs had a point--up to a point. As long as people have processor- and keyboard-intensive computing tasks to perform, good ol' laptops and desktops aren't going anywhere. But after sifting through our yearly "Best of" lists, we saw unmistakably that, as "personal computing" has become more mainstream and more entertainment-oriented, the devices used for "personal computing" have strayed farther and farther away from traditional PCs.
The seismic shift from traditional PCs to other computing devices isn't the only major change we've witnessed in the world of personal tech over the past few years. Another key development is a dramatic change in the nature of software, services, and peripheral hardware, brought on by the popularity of smaller, less-powerful gadgets such as phones and tablets. As a result, your overall computing experience today relies on fundamentally different devices and technologies than it did even a few years ago.
Consider 2005, which you no doubt remember as the year Everybody Loves Raymond ended its run on CBS. In conventional terms, it doesn't seem that long ago; yet if you look at some of the top 10 products on our list that year, they seem quaint at best and archaic at worst.
The late Steve Jobs often referred to the "post-PC" world. And whenever he did that, our entire staff would get a bit nervous. After all, the name of this site happens to be PCWorld, and Steve Jobs was often right when he declared something toast (see: floppy disks, optical drives, FireWire, brick-and-mortar music stores, phones with buttons, and netbooks).
To test Jobs's "post-PC" proclamation, we decided to try a little experiment: We compiled the past seven years' worth of our 100 Best Products of the Year lists, pulled out the top 10 products selected each year, and set them side by side for comparison. (To run the experiment yourself, check out the "PCWorld 10 Best Products of the Year: 2005-2011" chart below.)
As it turns out, Jobs had a point--up to a point. As long as people have processor- and keyboard-intensive computing tasks to perform, good ol' laptops and desktops aren't going anywhere. But after sifting through our yearly "Best of" lists, we saw unmistakably that, as "personal computing" has become more mainstream and more entertainment-oriented, the devices used for "personal computing" have strayed farther and farther away from traditional PCs.
The seismic shift from traditional PCs to other computing devices isn't the only major change we've witnessed in the world of personal tech over the past few years. Another key development is a dramatic change in the nature of software, services, and peripheral hardware, brought on by the popularity of smaller, less-powerful gadgets such as phones and tablets. As a result, your overall computing experience today relies on fundamentally different devices and technologies than it did even a few years ago.
Consider 2005, which you no doubt remember as the year Everybody Loves Raymond ended its run on CBS. In conventional terms, it doesn't seem that long ago; yet if you look at some of the top 10 products on our list that year, they seem quaint at best and archaic at worst.
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