Ahhh, the water faucet. It's been delivering water to sinks since 1700 BC in a Minoan palace using a simple concept of terra cotta piping and spouts. Not much has changed really. Leonardo Da Vinci designed the first valves in the 1500's. And through the 1900's there were three more advancements to include quarter turn, single handle and ball valve designs. Finally we ended up with the automatic motion activated valves brought on by public awareness of “germs”. How can something see such little change for thousands of years only to have the majority of its advancements in the last century? Obviously for the faucet it is the simplicity of the device and the Industrial Revolution but I'm using this example to illustrate how something can exist for such a long time with very little change. And the beauty is, it still doesn't need new instructions with each new version. By the way, did you know the average family uses the faucet 70+ times per day?
Before a few centuries ago, technological advances were far and few between. Maybe once per century or longer. Look at how long it took to go from the sword to the gun. After the Industrial Revolution, a lot of things advanced pretty quickly. Mainly things people used to socialize and improve quality of life like the telephone, television and the automobile. However, after a certain amount of time they settled into a slower and more predictable rate of improvement. This is referred to as “lockin”.
Now fast forward to the Age of Electronics or the “Information Age”. When was the last time you purchased a cell phone only to have a newer and better version available even before you have pocket wear marks in your favorite pair of jeans? Computers and software upgrades are almost continuous. You can now digitally store what took 100 VHS tapes, or 50 CD-ROM's on a plastic chip the size of your fingernail. Scientists are mapping everything from the brain to the universe. You can pretty much find information on anything you want in minutes via the internet. You can communicate and share pictures with someone thousands of miles away as if they were your neighbor. And on and on and on.
Why is this happening? Why do we continually have to learn new features, new tips, new tricks, new procedures, etc? The question I get asked most commonly is “Why do you have to change it if it was working fine in the first place?” And the population most challenged by this phenomenon is the elderly. The people we work for every day … our residents. Unfortunately the answer to these questions aren't easy and there are actually several theories that may not leave you with the solid answers you probably hoped for. So as to not drag this out too far I will only touch on a few of them.
It is said that technology products are “self-accelerating”. That is, the products own processes enable them to develop even more rapidly. For instance, computers are used to help develop faster and better computers. And those new chips are immediately put into use. With the aid of faster computers, other sciences can make advancements faster as well. With everything going digital and computerized, more discoveries are being made every day now. They each benefit the advancement of the other. Like a perfect storm. What used to take months or years now can only take weeks or days. All in the interest of creating longer life, better environment, better economy and of course, better revenue. However, the belief is that technologies with this property of perpetual self-accelerated development, sometimes termed “autocatalysis”, create conditions that are unstable, unpredictable and unreliable. And since these particular autocatalytic technologies drive whole sectors of society, there is a risk that civilization itself may become unstable, unpredictable and unreliable.
Another theory is that it all ties to advancements in communication … for communication and by communication. In other words, 100 years ago it would take days if not months to spread the news of a discovery to different parts of the world. Today that same information can be made available to the entire world in a matter of minutes. An Internet or telephone connection is the only limitation. And with that type of knowledge sharing between all disciplines of researchers and developers, the rate of technological advance increases exponentially. On a world wide scale.
Honestly, at the Beatitudes Campus, we upgrade equipment simply because the old equipment is just that … OLD. In order to avoid major down times we have to continually be proactive and upgrade at about the expected life span of any particular device. We don't want to just use it until it breaks and then have to suffer the wait time for ordering something new. But unfortunately either way comes with all the new advancements that have occurred since the deployment of the first one. New features, new buttons, processes that all seem to have the sole purpose of frustrating the life out of us. But believe it or not, the intention is to make things better. And for us IT guys, it means job security in our field for a long time to come. Our challenge is to try and keep up with these advances as they occur. Sometimes an impossible task.
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