It’s fascinating to look back on predictions made and to see how close they were, particularly when those predictions relate to technology. When we look at the predictions made in the 50s, we see a hugely optimistic view of how technology was going to advance at a phenomenal rate and help us all to spend less time working and enjoy our lives more and more. When we look at any utopian views of the future we often see signs of a post-scarcity economy, one where nobody has to work or worry about money (for example Rick Webb wrote a great article about how this works in Star Trek). Even as recently as the 1980s it was believed that by now we would have flying cars to transport us and robots to help improve our lives. So what’s gone wrong? I’ll answer that with another question: has something gone wrong?

We should at this point recognise that we have made many technological advancements: self-driving cars are pretty much here, we have autonomous aerial vehicles (drones) which are being used to automate tasks in the way we expected robots to do, we have more computing power in our pocket than was available to the apollo space program, the list goes on.

The problem we seem to have is that every technological advancement has brought with it an increasing need to steal our time and attention. Whilst television has gotten exponentially better, it has drawn us into spending more of our time watching it. The internet has given us access to nearly the whole world’s knowledge, but it also brought chatrooms, email and more recently social networks. The smartphone gave us access to everything on the go, the ultimate convenience, but now it barks regularly in our pocket, demanding attention like a puppy (that’s if we ever manage to prize it from our fingers and get it into our pockets in the first place).

One of the other problems we have now is the disjointed nature of all our technology. Not only are these services actively sucking our time, but the management of each individual service and each device takes up a significant amount of time. As if this situation wasn’t bad enough in our personal lives, we’re also facing the same battles in the workplace. It doesn’t matter if you’re an IT professional or not, you are constantly having to switch between different applications and devices, constantly having to adapt your thinking to fit this scenario or that scenario, not to mention all the times we duplicate data from one system to another.

That’s where TwinkleBob Solutions comes in, where we might be able to help. Perhaps we can look at whether your current suite of technology options (software and hardware) are suited to your needs (see Choosing the right technology); perhaps we can work together to integrate some of your existing software packages, to reduce duplication and effort; or maybe you’ve got a great idea for a life-changing app and all you’re missing is a capable developer.

Aside from flying cars, it seems to me that we have pretty much everything we need to use technology to make our lives easier. It just seems like we may just need to reorganise and rethink a little bit to get everything lined up just right.

If you want some help solving some of your technology problems, please get in contact with us.

Photo credit: x-ray delta one via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-SA