How Technology Has Changed Over the Past Two Decades

Remember the turn of the century? Y2K was supposed to be a big thing that turned out to be nothing to worry about. If you are old enough to remember the end of the nineties, you have witnessed some amazing developments, but if you are too young to recall the days of dial-up modems, here is how technology has changed since the turn of the century.

The Arrival of Mobile Phones

Nokia and Motorola dominated the mobile phone market in the late 90s and early 00s, yet mobile devices with cameras didn’t arrive until 2004 when GPS-enabled ‘smartphones’ came into the market. Of course, today’s smartphones have everything except sex toys (maybe that is coming soon) and if you compared the first mobile phone cameras with today’s generation, it is a different world! How many Australian adults don’t own a mobile device? We think you can count them with one hand!

Flip Phones

The early 2000s saw the first flip phone and Samsung took most of the market with their amazing devices. Like most trend fads, flip phones had their day, the texting took hold and the Blackberry became the device to have.

Enter The iPhone

Apple launched the iconic iPhone in 2007, but it wasn’t an immediate success, then we saw touch screens which was a game-changer, with hi-res graphics and super-fast processors. The iPhone has now firmly established itself as the market leader, while Samsung uses Android rather than iOS.

Gaming

The year 2000 saw the first PS2 released and that was the first console to be aimed directly at the adult market. Internet speeds increased, which was good news for the online gaming community. Nintendo saw a niche in the market for mobile gaming with their GameBoy, a device that outsold just about everything else.

Voice Over Internet Protocol

All you techies out there know the impact VoIP had on the world, when Internet telephony emerged, allowing users to communicate in real-time with audio and video. Admittedly, the early version of Internet phones didn’t have good video quality, due to speeds, but today, there are many platforms that offer video calls. A young person would never understand why free video calls around the world are something special! A 50-year-old can definitely tell you how things were when they were young.

Computing

In the year 2000, less than 30% of Australians had a home computer, whereas today, that number would be close to 80%, if not higher. General specs have grown exponentially, with quad-core processing pioneered by Intel and AMD, with lighting speed video cards with literally gigabytes of RAM! The first time laptops outsold desktop PCs was in 2005, when huge developments were made in the design of micro components, enabling manufacturers to build smaller computers that packed a whole lot of power.

When will technology development stop?

We don’t think it ever will, so buckle up and enjoy the ride!

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Patrice Shankman

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