RELATED TERMS: Metaverse
Ben Thompson, a technology commentator, suggests that there have been three epochs in the evolution of the networked world in which we currently live (Naughton, 2021). Each is defined by its core technology and ‘killer app’. The first epoch was that of the personal computer (PC), beginning in August 1981. Its core technology was the computer’s open architecture and the MS-DOS operating system, later reconfigured as Windows. The killer pp was the spreadsheet.
The second epoch was that of the internet which began with the Netscape initial public offering in August 1995. The core technology was the web browser and the search engine was the killer app. The dominant use came to be social networking, with Facebook capturing the dominant market share.
The third epoch is that of mobility, beginning in January 2007 when Apple announced the iPhone, launching the the smartphone revolution. The core technology is a duopoly shared between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android system. The killer app is the so-called sharing economy, or, more properly the data-gathering economy, and the dominant communications medium is messaging.
John Naughton (2021) speculates what the fourth epoch might be. The most obvious candidates, he suggests, are metaverses, conceived as massive virtual reality environments, cryptography in the sense of blockchain technology and quantum computing. The latter two, cryptography and quantum computing, Naughton proposes, might be at odds with one another since quantum computing would undermine the security offered by cryptography.
Reference
Naughton, J. (2021) PC, internet, smartphine: what’s the next big technological epoch? The Observer, 12 September, p.23.
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