We hear it all the time, that the pace of technological change today is faster than ever before. But what does that really mean, and why does it matter?

It means that if you were born in 1920, technologies in your life changed slowly. Think electricity, cars, telephones. At the time, these were huge innovations. But they took over 40 years to reach 3 out of 4 households in the U.S.

Compare this to the experience of someone born just 50 years later. Digital technologies like social media took only 11 years to reach 7 of 10 Americans, and smartphones took even less time. This shift to software platforms has meant that today’s tech scales further and faster than 1920s technologies ever could.

Yet the policies, laws, and systems we need to protect and guide us haven’t kept up. Our political, economic, and legal institutions were designed for a another time, one with different expectations for labor and privacy. It’s resulted in a growing gap between old-tech regulations and the ones we need to thrive in today’s digital world.

Azeem Azhar is someone who’s thought a lot about this. And his book, The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics, and Society provides a useful model for thinking about where we’ve come from, where we’re headed, and how to navigate these changes.

Episode Links

Ray Kurzweil

Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View podcast

CubeSat

The Manhattan Project 

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

1981 Air Traffic Controllers' Strike

The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman

Horace Dediu

The Story of Work by Jan Lucassen

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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