Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Speed of Innovation

As I arrived at the Bob Bullock Museum I was told that I must go to the National Archive exhibit which was actually very interesting. There were unique videos and letters that are important to the history of the United States. When I made it upstairs to the oil exhibit I was a little disappointed. There were only pictures of most things and I could not find anything really interesting to post. One thing that really caught my attention was the speed of innovation. Within the span of fifteen years, the drills went from what was basically a hoe to a very complicated three rotating blade mechanism. Then I began to think about innovation in the span of my lifetime. The rate of advances are really amazing. When I was a child I remember my dad writing his thesis on a Smith-Corona word processor and today the technology has made that machine an ancient relic they could have had in the Bob Bullock museum. In class, Dr. Webber was saying how if we thought future generations were going to be smarter than us, then we would not worry too much about the energy crisis. I agree with this, who knows what the world will look like in ten or fifteen years and what new advances we will have. This may be why people and politicians have some resistance to changing the way we do things. I wonder what content this class will have in ten years and what will change in that time span.

No comments: