All-day long we use our mobile devices and never give one thought to who invented the various technologies which enable our information retrieval and interaction in this highly mobile world. Twelve billion mobile devices in this world interacting every day and do you ever think about “who thought of that” bit of technology which makes your connected world connect?
WHO THOUGHT OF THAT?
Almost everyone buys goods and services online now without ever giving a second thought to the security of it or even how we pay for the items we want. Back in the day, everyone was terrified to enter their credit card information on a website, but along came PayPal
(Musk/Paypal/Tesla) and it offered a safer way to pay. As time went on and we started to use the internet more and more, it became cumbersome to keep entering our personal information or billing and shipping information repeatedly.
Then one day it all worked flawlessly and the websites we gave our business seemed to remember all the relevant information about us, our preferences, our favorites and buying information. This innovation made e-commerce on the internet gain even more acceptance (Pulitzer/ Scan Commerce, eCommerce, Auto Fill Auto Update).
In the past, we had to search for libraries or online archives to find the information we sought and it was a tedious task. If you did not know the exact phrase and way to ask for the information you sought, then it might as well have not existed. That is until search engines changed the way we used the internet (Brin-Page/Google). Yet, we never really think about who made all this fascinating technology work as we use it.
TECHNOLOGY HAS COME A LONG WAY
For those of us who are old enough to remember, we remember the days when nothing was mobile and everything was slow and it was hard to remember the special words or codes to use the little bit of software which made computers work. Then, as always, things changed and we could just point and click and our computers knew what we were asking of them (Gates/Microsoft).
No more photo albums or neighborhood clicks of friends who you dialogued with daily and they knew all about you, your life and what you were engaging in. Those days are gone
(Zuckerberg/Facebook). Now your neighborhood is the whole world. No more passing a note in class to a person you wanted to message, now you can message a whole class of people (Dorsey/Twitter).
Knowledge Knows No Bounds
Today all the knowledge of the world is yours for the asking thanks to a group of visionaries and futurists who “saw the future” long before it happened. Inventors like Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page.
You might not know the name, but you use their inventions and innovations daily.
Microsoft or Windows, Twitter, PayPal or Tesla Automobiles, SpaceX, or perhaps you like the way your mobile phone can see a Q-Code and snap it loads the information from the web, and who doesn’t love not having to keep entering in shipping and payment information.
Most thankful of all is that floppies, discs, CD’s and DVDs are gone and or you no longer have to update your computer or mobile device and it just updates automatically (Pulitzer). Everyone loves all things Google and who doesn’t love Facebook or Twitter. Think about it – our technological lives are pretty amazing and easy!
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
The world expects to be connected. We expect things to work without ever giving consideration to “who made those things work”. Just like when we flip on a light switch and the lights come, the names of Tesla and Edison don’t come to mind, the same happens when we use our phone to scan a bar code to find the best product price online. The people who are the ones who innovate tend to be forgotten over time.
Innovators, Futurists, and Visionaries make our world larger, more accessible and more transparent every day.
The following infographic is a peek into the goings-on behind the scenes in the technical world of innovation and the top five individuals responsible for innovating our future and who keep on creating the amazing world we live in.