Measuring Technological Progress in Olympic Steps
- Posted:
- August 14th, 2008
- Stuart
A thought came to me the other day, while watching an advert for the Beijing Olympics and the fact that it is the first Olympics being recorded and broadcast in high definition: 4 years ago, the concept of high definition TV wasn’t even on the horizon, or that technology would even have moved on so far, and so fast in the time between one Olympic Games and the next.
4 years ago, most homes (in Australia) that had a connection to the internet didn’t have broadband (or at least the slow-speed version that is touted as such here). Now it is commonplace, and not only is there now a much higher speed version becoming available, but the advantages of the current version is being widely used where it wouldn’t have even been considered by the average Australian watching the 2004 Olympics. Mobile phones displaying TV, TiVo, YouTube and similar sites, video blogs, live scoring and lap (and even sector times) for events such as the Formula One Grand Prix, Web TV and on and on.
This leads to a couple of observations – firstly, if we have moved on so far in just 4 years time that these phenomenal leaps are regarded as day-to-day occurrences, just what are we going to see in 2012, 2016, 2020?
Secondly, how in the world are we meant to keep up? Not in terms of affording all the new gadgets required for these technologies (that is a separate issue altogether), but just getting one’s headspace around the constantly changing technology landscape? It’s getting to the point that every week we have to absorb and accept yet another concept that has escaped from the realms of science fiction into our daily lives as science fact.
I’m sure there are many, many such examples from one Olympics to the next. It’s a good opportunity to reflect back on just how far we have come, from one Olympics to the next, and how far, and fast we will be moving by the time the next ones arrive.
