How technology has changed in the last 20 years? (7 Latest Technologies)

We research and review everything that we share and recommend on our blog and try to keep things up to date. When you buy something through our links we may earn a commission. Learn more about our affiliate disclosure and about us.

I hope you get all information below about how technology has changed in the last 20 years? Media, education, transportation, and healthcare are just a handful of the many areas of our society that have been significantly changed by technology, which now permeates everything we do. Perhaps more significantly, technology has profoundly altered the way we connect and communicate with one another.

How technology has changed in the last 20 years

This is all part of technology’s ultimate goal, improving people’s lives. Technology is all about new, innovative ideas, big and small—that keep us linked, advance, and even inspire and contribute to the creation of even bigger ideas.

According to reports, just over half of the world’s population now has an internet connection, up from less than 7% in 2000. This places broadband accessibility at the forefront of our societies.

According to statistics, there were 740 million cell phone subscriptions globally at the beginning of the 2000s. 4.66 billion people were using the internet actively as of January 2021. And of this total, 4.32 billion people, or 92.6%, used mobile devices to access the internet.

All of our contacts, personally and professionally, are impacted by the revolutionary nature of the internet. We can communicate with individuals wherever we are and at any time.

It has quickened commercial activity and increased the scope for innovation. Additionally, it has altered how individuals express themselves, particularly on social media, and has generally brought a greater sense of unity and division than ever before.

How technology has changed in the last 20 years?

We have seen things happen that we could not have even imagined at the turn of the century! Here is an index of the most important technological changes over the past 20 years.

Internet Speed:

Twenty years ago, dial-up was the internet connection method, which connected to the internet using a phone line. Because you could only use one phone line or internet connection at a time, teenage-parent families experienced a substantial increase in fights!

Internet Speed

Dial-up connections might take up to a minute to establish, and the modem connected with a succession of melodic beeps, screeches, and boings.

Dial-up was well known for being extremely sluggish, at 56 kbit/s compared to the current average UK speed of 22 Mbps. To put this in perspective, a 6MB image would download in 15 minutes via dial-up, yet in just 2 seconds today.

We can access the internet wirelessly today, no matter where we are. WiFi was first introduced in the early 2000s. Still, demand for it skyrocketed as WiFi-enabled phones were widely available around 2007, and people began to demand public WiFi spots while we were on the go.

Read: How has the development of technology positively affected our wellness?

We can access the internet via 4G on our mobile phone networks, and 5G is gradually becoming available, which will speed up our internet access even further. In the past 20 years, significant growth has also been seen in the number of persons with access to an internet connection. In the UK, only 25% of homes had access to broadband in 2000, but over 95% did in 2018!

Social Media & Messaging:

The first blogging platforms rose to prominence in the late 1990s, sparking a social media phenomenon that is still going strong today. LiveJournal and Blogger were two of the first blogging platforms.

One of the first global social media platforms, MySpace, was introduced in 2003 and quickly gained popularity among aspiring musicians as a venue to upload and share their songs. When Facebook went live for the first time in 2004, there were already 1,000,000 people who used it every month.

Today, we have a variety of social media sites, like LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and many more, that all cater to specific social networking niches.

Most people are on social media, and as of the third quarter of 2019, Facebook had 2,499,000,000 monthly active members, making it the most popular social networking site globally.

In the 2000s, MSN Messenger was the first widely used instant messaging service to stay in touch with their schoolmates after lessons ended for the day.

It began as a text-only messaging service but gradually included game-play, photo-sharing, and video calls. It had as many as 330 million members in 2009, but Microsoft shut it down in 2014 and replaced it with the freshly acquired Skype.

WhatsApp is the most widely used messaging service today, with 1.5 billion and 450 million daily users as of 2018.

Computers:

Only 44% of UK households possessed a home computer in 2000, according to research by The Office for National Statistics (UK). Twenty years ago, computers were large, hefty, and occupied a lot of desk space (monitors might be as deep as 30 cm!).

How technology has changed in the last 20 years

They might be sluggish and unstable, with images that move far more slowly than they do now. External hard drives were widespread since internal computer memory was likewise constrained.

It isn’t effortless to imagine a world without computers today. By 2018, the percentage of people who had a home computer had doubled, from 44% to 88%. We use them at work, at home, and even on the go because they are now smaller, faster, and more convenient than before.

Computers can now be carried anywhere you go in the form of a tablet or notebook that can fit into a handbag rather than occupying a whole desk. Additionally, they now have more memory than before.

Even though laptops were invented in the 1980s, it wasn’t until 2005 that sales of laptops surpassed those of desktops. Because they allow for remote and hot-desking work, laptops have completely changed the way we operate. A laptop costs a fraction of what it would have in the early 2000s, but the performance is far superior, thanks to the speed at which technology has developed.

Learn: What technological development revolutionized the making of steel?

Music:

Music was saved on cassette tapes and CDs in the early 2000s, purchased in stores and played on stereo systems or portable Sony Walkmans. When the first iPod was introduced in 2001, you could save all of your CDs on a portable device and listen to them wherever you were by uploading them to iTunes.

The first iPod had a 5GB hard drive that could store 1000 songs in MP3 format at a bitrate of 160 kbps. Since March 2002, a 10GB variant has been offered, doubling the storage to about 2000 songs.

Read: List of electronic gadgets used in daily life

In the last five years, the memory capacity of mobile phones has increased to the point where it is large enough to keep your music collection, making even the iPod and other MP3 players nearly useless.

Nowadays, almost all music can be downloaded or streamed to our smartphones and laptops, negating the necessity for actual in-store sales. We can listen to our whole music library wherever we go, which is a sharp contrast to the year 2000 when you had to physically carry any tapes or CDs you needed to listen to on the road.

Gaming:

Since the turn of the millennium, the gaming industry has made enormous strides thanks to the faster internet. The PS2 was the first machine that appeared “grown-up,” and its release in 2000 signalled a turning point in gaming culture.

Gaming

Before that, most gaming systems catered to kids and teenagers, with popular titles like Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog being played on Sega, N64, Xbox, and PS1 platforms.

The Nintendo GameBoy was well-liked in the early 2000s regarding portable gaming, while the Nintendo DS, which was released in 2004, included a touch screen. With consoles like the Nintendo Switch and the launch of Google Stadia, which enables you to stream games over wifi and play them on a laptop, smartphones, and tablets, gaming systems are now more portable than ever.

In the past 20 years, gaming graphics technology has likewise made significant advancements, from color blocks to pixelated visuals to the almost lifelike imagery we see today. With features like motion tracker technology and virtual reality headsets, many different gaming consoles are available as 2020 approaches.

These technologies give you the impression that you are actually playing the game rather than just watching it. The development of 3D graphics that look realistic and game physics that behave exactly how they would in reality help with this?

With this type of technology, mobile gaming and the Nintendo Wii helped to broaden the appeal of gaming further and attract elderly “non-gamers.” Finally, thanks to platforms like Steam and online app stores, which have given independent developers a true presence in the market, a considerably wider variety of game content is available today.

Television & Entertainment:

As there was no catch-up capability on televisions in the early 2000s, VHS tapes were a common means to watch movies you had purchased or to record shows you were going to miss.

Because of the improved quality of DVDs, VHS tapes started to lose favor around 2002, and by 2008, they were all but obsolete. Nowadays, watching movies and TV episodes on streaming services like Netflix is the most common method of entertainment, and buying actual copies of movies is a rare occurrence.

It’s interesting that Netflix first offered DVD rentals before introducing streaming services in 2010!

In 2000, it was unusual to have more than the usual five television channels. Still, nowadays, satellite boxes can provide you with hundreds of channels to choose from—possibly even too many alternatives! You can also use the broadcaster’s on-demand services to watch the shows you missed; this eliminates the need to set up your VHS player to record your preferred shows while you are away.

Streaming services like Netflix, Now TV, and YouTube have made traditional TV less popular, as has the use of these services overall. Instead, people watch shows online where they can pick when and what they want to watch.

Mobile Phones:

In contrast to today, when your mobile phone is probably never more than an arm’s length away, things were very different 20 years ago. Only 47% of UK households had a mobile phone in 2000. The Office for National Statistics said that unlike the phones we have now, most of the things they could do were SMS texting and calling (UK).

Mobile Phones

Everyone carries a mobile phone in their pocket today, but it’s more than just a phone! Modern smartphones come equipped with an internet connection, high-definition cameras, gaming features, music storage, and various apps that can be used to do everything from booking a taxi to locating a date quickly.

Although it’s difficult to envision a time before cameras were common on smartphones, this didn’t begin to happen until the 2000s.

Nokia and Motorola dominated the market in the 1990s and the early 2000s. The first ringtones looks, and games that could be customized were introduced in models that were released between 1998 and 2000. Between 2004 and 2006, the first “smartphones” started to arrive since they had GPS capabilities.

Read: Future of technology in 10 years

The 2000s saw a huge increase in the use of flip phones, with Samsung being the most well-known manufacturer. When the first iPhone was introduced in 2007, though, they weren’t as well-liked as they are now. Instead, the physical keyboard’s single-letter keys, the email feature, and the ‘BBM’ instant messaging app made Blackberrys popular.

Physical keyboards are increasingly becoming an anomaly in today’s touch display world! In contrast to the 47% of homes with mobile phones in 2000, 95% of households have mobile phones in 2018.

Conclusion:

Hence we sum up all about how technology has changed in the last 20 years? It is clear that technology has advanced significantly over the past 20 years in all fields, having a significant impact on our daily life. Imagine trying to predict what the world will be like in 20 years.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did technology change over the last 10 years?

The shift to mobile and the emergence of data, which propelled the expansion of AI, e-commerce, social media, and biotechnology, were the major drivers of the 2010s’ extraordinary innovation. Additional fundamental changes will occur in the 2020s as data latency decreases and AI algorithms advance.

How will technology change our lives in 20 years?

Beginning in 2030, people might begin utilizing robots to help them around the house and as a companion. By 2045, we may be residing in a virtual environment akin to The Matrix. By 2045, humans might also turn into cyborgs. By 2040, people may also be able to modify the settings in their homes thanks to artificial intelligence.

Similar Posts