Discovery News — Inventions are funny things. Sometimes it takes decades for a new technology to shake up an industry. The automobile, for example, took a few decades to disrupt transportation and completely revolutionize it.
That isn’t unusual, said Eric Schatzberg, associate professor of the history of science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Technologies do change our world, but only as the result of human choices first to develop the technology to a level of practicality, and then to adopt it widely enough so that its use becomes widespread,” he said.
Dominic Basulto, a “digital thinker” at consulting firm Electric Artists, agreed. “When the first PCs came out, there was widespread disbelief that every individual would need one of these,” he said. “Yet, the PC ended up disrupting the entire computer industry, and then the entire technology industry.”
In the last century, new technologies have arisen that hardly anyone from the time of the telegraph could have imagined. We look at 10 of them that have completely altered how we live, do business and define our cultures. More
