I believe that the final goal of digital advancements is to create an animatronic version of the human brain. This model would be impervious to environmental distractions, cognitive bias or limitations, and would not be bound by computing power like the human brain.
The process to our current digital age was not linear, it was not clean and orderly, and it was mostly driven out of necessity. Necessity of what? The need to quench our undying curiosity about the essence of life, necessity to protect ourselves and our loved ones, and the necessity to connect and communicate with others.
The ancient Greeks developed the Antikythera so they could better understand how our universe works, allowing them to predict cosmological events. The device was impossibly ahead of its time, and if it hadn’t been lost in a shipwreck would have drastically changed the timeline of humanity. Antikythera is dated to before the year 0, making it easily the oldest digital device ever discovered. Why did the Greeks bother to invent such a device? They wanted to better understand this crazy world we live on. In our modern world, we have invented artificial intelligence. Why? To make information more accessible. Accessible information allows larger proportions of the population to become educated and understand the world for themselves. As I mentioned in the introduction, the process of digitization was not linear. The advances of the Antikythera were negated due to human error and natural interference. This groundbreaking device was lost to time in a shipwreck, and went undiscovered until the 1900s.
Some technological advancements were driven by personal tragedy, leading to devices that prevent other people from enduring the same experience. The telegraph was created by Samuel Morris. While he was away from home, his wife became sick, someone was sent to deliver the news to him, but she had passed away by the time he returned home. Naturally, Morris was devastated by the fact he didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to his wife. and knew that he could because news took too long to reach him. Recognizing that the true issue was with the speed at which information traveled, Morris gave up his successful career as a painter to pursue faster means of communication. He spent the remainder of his career designing and perfecting the telegraph. The telegraph was an enormous step forwards, instantly becoming the most efficient means of communication and inspiring the next generation of digital advancements.
One of the first modern digital computers designed was made to kill people. During WWII, the United States wanted to automate the calculations used to dictate where a bomb will land. The Norden bombsight was invented with the sole purpose of killing others more efficiently. Since Norden, the American military has had their hand in inventing or progressing numerous technologies.
Other times, it took a tragedy to make people realize how useful a new technology is. Twitter was created with the intention of spreading information to a lot of people as quickly as possible. Their user base was slowly increasing, but the app gained much of its popularity after a 2008 earthquake in China. Amid the chaos, traditional forms of communication were overwhelmed or unusable, so people began using the app to coordinate rescue missions and provide updates. Twitter’s practical use became clear in this moment and began to be applied to other situations where information needed to be disseminated quickly.
As you can tell from just a few examples of landmark technological improvements, the process of how we got to where we are today was not clean and neat. There were various reasons for improvement, and each step represented a small piece of the puzzle that is our modern digital age.