When Benjamin Franklin first threw his kite into a lightning storm in 1752 one can only imagine the excitement and.. ahem.. buzz.. that one might have felt during his incredible journey to understand electricity. It’s unimaginable that computers would have yet crossed his mind although with a mind so brilliant perhaps he did have an insight into the future of how such energies may change the world. Nonetheless, for many years after that first wild storm, electricity was very much limited to those who specialised and understood its very nature. Other than to power a few lighthouse lamps toward the mid-1800′s it wasn’t until some decades later that electricity began being used to power the global industrial revolution – aka, machines in factories. Even then, teams of electrical specialists worked inhouse on large generators to make sure that the factory was powered when it needed to be and that productivity was at a maximum high. I’d guess this was a pretty tough job. I think a few people in the IT industry can relate.
It wasn’t really until the 1930′s that homes and businesses began to see electricity as part of the norm. Power lines began to be rolled out, electrical power stations were set up and of course over time it wasn’t necessary to have those specialist teams of people in the factory any more because the product of electricity had become largely commodotised.
Now, in 2011 we’re seeing the commodotisation of computers [...]
If we can trust everything we’ve ever been told in movies, and I’m pretty sure we can, this next decade should be abundant with mind-bending technology. Back to the Future Part II taught us that flying cars that run on garbage could be here as soon as 2015 and it looks as though Richard Branson will ensure space travel is available well.. to those of us willing to part with a few hundred thousand dollars per journey. Yes, the future is here and now that we’ve traded in our pocket calculators for iPhones, our floppy disks for flash memory and our thesauruses for Google.. what will the modern office look like in the decade to come, and, how will our work lives and interactions change as a result?
