For some people, history can be defined entirely by specific moments. For others, history’s most widely-known events may be viewed as inevitable small parts of greater political, economic, and cultural patterns. Some historians would say that World War I burst out of the barrel of Gavrilo Princip’s pistol after his shot struck Franz Ferdinand. Others would point to the decades of growing tension between major world powers and argue that just about any event could have set off the Powder Keg of Europe, irrespective of one young man’s actions on a particularly fateful day in Sarajevo.
I often times find myself in the latter camp. Whether discussing global history or the history of technology, an individual with the right ideas at the wrong time and wrong place, or groundbreaking technology introduced a little too early can sputter out and fall far short of their potential impact. Most trends – the adoption of color television, the popularization of the car, the popularization of personal computers, etc, don’t have a single event to which we can point and say “that’s when technology changed for everyone”.
There is one event and one time period in particular where I can point to such a sudden change. Jonathan Haidt characterizes this type of change as producing “hockey stick” charts – one where there’s minimal linear growth, and then, at the end of the shaft of the hockey stick, a sudden, immediate change in slope (some may call it a non-differentiable function) after a certain point in time.
These events happened in 2006, give or take a little.
In 2005, 2006, and 2007 we have:
2005
- Youtube founded.
2006
- Steve Jobs announces the iPhone, immediately changing the perception of both smartphones and touchscreen UIs.
- Prior to the iPhone, smartphones were often synonymous with Blackberry devices. These devices were for business use only. The iPhone was clearly a product for the masses.
- Touchscreeens now work well enough for the average person to use.
- For an excellent depiction of the mobile internet and highly capable smartphones contemporary to the iPhone’s release, take a look at Maddox’ post about the iPhone and the Nokia E70.
- Facebook opens account registration to the general public and introduces the News Feed. Social media goes from usernames, avatars, and profiles to real photos and the News Feed.
- The Nintendo Wii is released, outselling all previous Nintendo consoles and establishes casual gaming as a major pillar of the gaming market.
2007
- Google, the world’s most popular search engine then and now, acquires what would become the world’s 2nd most popular search engine, Youtube
This is the first post in a multi-part series. This post sets the stage for the coming sea change in how we spend our free time and to what we give, and often surrender, our attention.
NOTE – For argument’s sake, some things fizzled after being introduced too early in 2005. After years of joking that NetBSD ran on everything but a toaster, Technologic Systems brought the first instance of NetBSD on a toaster to life. Unfortunately for our toaster, time was ripe for the iPhone, Facebook, and Twitter, but IoT was a few years away from widespread adoption. I’ll revisit IoT in a later post series.