One of the biggest factors for change in our society has been technology, something we can see quite clearly by looking back over the last ten years as the first decade of the new millennium brought to us life-changing and revolutionary technologies and gadgets. From iPods and smartphones to digital photography and gesture controls, how quickly these appeared and how fast they have evolved, there’s no telling where the next ten years, five years even, will take us. There’s only one thing for sure, there’s no going back.

Ten Years Ago…

Parents Were Still All-Knowing

Up until a few years ago parents were thought to be all-knowing. Children would ask questions like “Where do Eucalyptus trees come from?” and their parents would respond “Go ask your mother” or “Go ask your father”. Between the two of them they’d either have the answer or make something up that sounded good enough. The internet changed all of that and now parents tell their kids to “Google it”. Not only is information on tap, but thanks to websites like Wikipedia it is finally fast and immediate, and now with YouTube, there’s probably a matching video for the answer too.

Yahoo circa 1996. Wikipedia? Google? YouTube? Still to come.  

Teens Did Their Talking On Phones

Not too long ago teens used phones tied to their homes to talk to each other. They would sit in the dark, staring at the wall, talking to each other about the things they would do. With the introduction of mobile phones they could make calls from anywhere, including the very places where they wanted to do those things they planned and so they left the indoors and no longer had to stare at walls during their conversations. Then came wireless headsets which allowed them to carry their conversations with them, freeing their hands so they could talk while doing the things they would have planned for.

A cordless phone, the device of choice for "chatting" in the 90's. 

Today’s generation doesn’t talk at all of course. Talking on a phone is now a very public activity and so today’s up-and-coming conversationalist likes to use text messages and social networking updates to “chat”, allowing them to have private, very intimate conversations in a very public way, while still keeping them free to do the things they want to do outside of their home.

People Waited, They Dreaded, They Feared

Remember when you used to have to wait? Wait for your friends to show up at the pre-arranged meeting spot? Wait for the bank to open the next day? Wait to see if your package would arrive on time? Now with instant messaging, online banking, GPS tracking, and many other connected technologies the word “wait” has left most people’s vocabularies to be replaced by two, “find out”.This change is more than laziness, if you’re worried that you might not have enough money in an account to cover a cheque, worried that a relative might be on a crashed plane, or worried that you might have left your cellphone behind in a cab, today’s online banking, flight status notifications, and GPS tracking technologies allow you to reduce worry time and in most cases, with a laptop and an online connection, let you do something about the situation even if it’s 2 am. For many, being connected has become an empowering experience.

A simple progress bar, watched by millions for hours on end during the late 1990's.

Music Was Mixed On Tape

Ten years ago there was no iPod. If you wanted to travel with your music you had to pack it up on discs or tapes and if you didn’t feel like listening to complete albums then you’d had better set an afternoon aside to create a “mixed tape”. For many the first iPod, which looks archaic today, was a “life-changing” device, simply for its on-the-fly mixes and world of single tracks. Today the iPod has evolved into the iPhone, storing large collections of music, movies, photos, and games, powering more than your personal soundtrack, but capable or delivering entertainment to entire crowds of party-goers for days on end if needed.

The popular Mix Tape of the 90's, although this one has a secret, it's actually a modern USB drive in disguise.

Photos Took An Hour To Develop

And that was considered impressive. Yes it was within this past decade that people discovered the benefits of digital cameras, the ability to immediately see the shot mere seconds after taking it, the joy of deleting bad photos to make room for more, and the confidence that comes with knowing you can hand your camera to anyone to take a photo and it will at least turn out. In such a few short years digital photography has evolved in leaps and bounds, fusing with cellphones, expanding to become pocket camcorders, and connecting with the internet through “face recognition” and “tagging”, so that for the first time an average photograph can take on a life of its own and travel around the world in ways beyond our best predictions.

The Polaroid Land Camera, "instant" photography as it existed until the 90's. 

All Video Games Were Hard Core

Ten years ago I was surrounded by people who swore up-and-down, who were quite adamant that they would never, ever, in their life time play a “video game” let alone buy a console. Today they are addicted to Farmville. The casual revolution in video games is right up there alongside the information highway and the digital revolution in creating a major lifestyle change as motion and gesture controls through the Nintendo Wii took what was a two-dimensional interaction (buttons and joysticks) and transformed it into a three-dimensional one, opening it up to include fitness, music, and casual sports. Who could have predicted that senior citizens would become one of the largest communities of “gamers”, testing their brain ages and holding tournaments for Wii Tennis? What’s to come for the next decade? Video games for pets?

An original PlayStation controller, the console of choice in 1999