Gradual Panic!

OK so I’ve sobered up and the realization that the decade is coming to a close is finally hitting me, and what a ten years it’s been. On the 31st December 1999 I used my first mobile phone in anger, a Trium pay-as-you go brick, it really was a piece of crap but at the time it was the best gadget in the world bar none. For the first time in my life I had a phone in my pocket. This was something mental. Not just because I had one but because everyone had one. at 12:01am on 1st January 2000, in the centre of Norwich (Norwich for God’s sake) 80% of the population reached into their pockets and pulled out the bricks that would change the world. Fair enough, the reception was awful and no one could get hold of anyone but it was the start of something big, the decade of the gadget. At the end of 2009 I’ll be pulling out my iPhone which in terms of my pocket gadget ten years prior is freaking phenomenal in it’s development. I don’t know how many of you are now smartphone owners but think back 10 years and you start to understand the gravity of how far we have come in such a short time.

So what else have we been been gifted with in the last decade? The smart phone, the Dual Core and Core 2 Duo Processors, the affordable laptop, the netbook, Windows Vista (ahem), Windows 7 (hooray), OS X, on-demand video, broadband, the iPod… the list goes on and on. The majority may take all this all for granted but as someone who trained to program missile guidance systems in the mid-90′s the naughties has really come good.

Nowadays we’re changing and upgrading our phones on a yearly basis. For example, I’m on my 5th iPod already. My first MP3 player was a Rio Blue. It held up to 15 songs and cost over £300 in 2001. Now I have a 16GB phone with apps, GPS and any other stuff that I care to download to it. The iPod functionality is almost a given. Compare this to the release of the original iPod and you can see how far we’ve come.

We should all give thanks to how simple and affordable technology has become. It really is a testament to how fab it is to be emersed in technology. Just have a look around at what’s in your pocket, in your office and celebrate the advance of the gadget empire.

Here’s to the next 10 years!