7 times that game-changing technology didn’t really change any games.
7 times that game-changing technology didn’t really change any games.
Apparently ChatGPT is a massive game changer for many industries. It can be a simultaneous career wrecker and enabler, depending on which side of the AI fence your job/business sits.
But I keep getting this nagging feeling that I’ve heard it all before. In fact, we’ve all heard it before so here’s 7 examples of it:
Late 90’s: Text Messaging is going to forever kill the written English language. Before predictive text, people shortened text messages to make them quicker and cheaper. The hype was that these abbreviations meant kids wouldn’t learn how to spell correctly, eventually dooming humanity's ability to spell correctly! A small change in technology called predictive text wrote that one out of the history books forever. Back to correct spelling (mostly). In fact it probably even helped improve some people’s spelling. Grammar, on the other hand, still suffers!
Early 2000’s: The Segway, touted as the ultimate revolution in urban transport! Maybe they were a bit ahead of their time but at least they created some funny fail videos.
Late 2000’s: 3D TV aimed to dethrone regular TVs, but due to high costs, lack of content, and the hassle of wearing 3D glasses, it never truly took off.
Early 2010’s: "Websites are dead; your business needs an app!" This notion thrilled app developers, but most businesses really didn't require an app.
Mid 2010’s: Voice technology like Alexa and Siri were predicted to eliminate the need for websites. According to this vision, users could simply ask Siri for information instead. How's that working out? Well, I can testify that Alexa is regularly subjected to verbal abuse in our house because it struggles with anything beyond basic requests. Humans now thrive on visual content more than ever, thanks to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. So, not much has changed on that front.
Mid 2010’s: Wearable tech like Google Glass will kill the handheld smartphone. Yep that was a thing. Until Google recently abandoned it. Just a few weeks ago Apple launched their own version, which does look a lot better, but still not likely to be a game changer. Quite cool though!
2021: The Metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg even changed the company name because he was so certain it would change our world. Billions of dollars invested and where is it now?
The now: ChatGPT and AI powered bots. Will they truly alter our world forever? Let’s wait and see.