The first passenger automobiles hit the streets around 242 years ago.  Steam powered and slow, this type of vehicle was not destined to make a significant impact on the daily lives of the masses for another 109 years.  Around 1806, steam technology was replaced by internal combustion engines but vehicles were still expensive. The horse and cart market was not disrupted until 1908 when Henry Ford introduced the ‘Tin Lizzie’ as “... a car for the great multitude... that... will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one”.  This was an early example of a disruptive technology that changed the world dramatically. 

A disruptive technology is one that radically transforms, creates or destroys whole markets.  The Model T Ford both transformed the automobile market and destroyed the horse and cart market.

New technological developments continue to change the world and today, few in our society escape the impact of change on our daily lives. This is no more evident than in the Internet.  New products marketed on the promise of making our lives even easier are announced almost daily at the moment.  And many of these are disruptive by their nature. 

Digital cameras have made our old but still perfectly functional film cameras obsolescent.

High power light emitting diodes will shortly replace the energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs that only recently replaced energy-wasting incandescent bulbs.

The classic telephone, first patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, replaced the telegraph and is itself now in the process of being replaced by Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) devices.  Video phones are now available to anyone with a broadband connection.

Examples of new disruptive technologies that will affect our futures are mobile broadband, cloud computing, social media.  But for these things, it is a combination of technologies and not a single new one, that impacts us. 

Cell phones changed the way we communicate but mobile broadband on our internet-friendly smart phone or tablet will disrupt our daily lives by making the Internet always accessible for shopping, entertainment and security.  Through location awareness, how we are targeted by advertisers is about to change in an intrusive way.

Cloud computing is lowering our computing costs by avoiding the need to purchase personal software such as word processors and spreadsheets.  More importantly, by storing our files on-line, cloud computing means that our documents are accessible whenever we want them where ever we are and using which ever device we have at the time.  

Couple cloud computing with always-on devices and a whole new world of automated machine to machine networks are possible.  This means that we can have security and farm or business monitoring systems that just work in the background and provide status reports to our mobile devices. 

Social media networks have become very popular over the last few years and is now a preferred means for people to interact with their friends and family no matter where in the world they may be.  Examples of popular social media networks are online video and voice chat, e-mail, online instant messaging and video conferencing.

Just as the early days of the motor car saw a resistance to that particular new technology, so today we see many people resisting the coming digital economy.  And just as that early resistance to the motor has turned around so that we now have nearly one registered vehicle per person in New Zealand, so tomorrow our access to broadband will be ubiquitous. 

Whether or not we like where technology is taking us, we will each adapt and use it.