Technology Innvoations

Today I presented with a colleague at the Minnesota Association for Children's Mental Health conference.  We presented the topic of technology abuse with a focus on adolescence use of technology (you can find our slides here).

In preparing for this conference I put together a timeline of the different communications-related technologies since the telegraph.  One thing that emerged from this timeline was that, since 1981 when the PC was introduced, communications technology has quickly evolved and many innovations emerged in a a very short period of time.  With such rapid development it is no wonder that we struggle as a society in understanding how to use these forms of communications without having them run our lives.

Looking back at the previous technology innovations I can guess there was some form of adjustment in the integration of the technology into society.  Hopefully, we can also adapt and find better ways to use these new technologies so that we can maintain our ability to connect with people in the absence of technology or, have technology enhance our real connections with each other.