Let's imagine you had a time machine. Go back to 1815, where nobody had wifi, where the fastest form of transportation you could get had 1 horsepower, and take a guy to the modern age. To him, we might as well be magicians. Talk to somebody 10k miles away? Fly higher than the mountains? Even without talking about the cutting edge of science, he would be blown away.
Now take a guy from the 1600s, bring him to the 1800s, and show him around. Compared to the other person's reaction, and you would be duly disappointed. Although he'd be impressed with scientific advancements, he wouldn't be blown away.
In order to blow somebody away by bring them to the 1800s, you'd have to go a lot further back, to the hunter-gatherer period. People from that period would indeed be blown away by the 1800s. Settlements? Cities? Large scale sea travel? All of these concepts would be novel.
This illustrates what's often called the "Law of Accelerating Returns". If you graphed human advancement on a graph, it would look something like:
Source: Uday I/O
If you zoomed out the timeline even further, it would look similar. However, humans tend to consistently underestimate how fast technological growth happens.
Artificial intelligence is an interesting related topic that I might write a separate blog post about. However, here is the main question?
What do you see as the future of technology?
Some opinions on the future of technology:
http://www.techinsider.io/futurists-are-terrified-of-the-singularity-2015-11
http://www.cio.com.au/article/590208/why-technological-singularity-unlikely-from-scientific-viewpoint/
Picture 1:
http://doowise.org/events/an-introduction-to-listening-to-life-living-beyond-the-story-2/
