Seeking disruptive tech

[Tapley, Mark]

On Dec 11, 2014, at 1:24 PM, Rich Alderson <RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org> wrote:

> From: Tapley, Mark
> Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2014 8:26 AM
> 
>> Tape -> floppy -> hard drives were evolutionary and the year-on-year
>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> ...
> Evolutionarily, that should be
> 
>    wire => metal tape => plastic tape => metal disks => floppy disks
> 
> over more than three decades, right?
> 
>                                                                Rich

Right! And I suspect one might trace back even before that, if allowed to include non-magnetic media. Delay lines?

But, I was thinking of technologies which are “disruptive” as only those which are widely adopted (which may be just my own prejudice). Not just everybody had copies of the wire and metal-tape information storage devices, but a good fraction of the population, at least of developed countries, had (plastic) audio tape drives and following. And these days, all those walkmen, floppy and hard drives in laptops, etc. have pretty much been supplanted by PDA’s with a volume of twitter garbage equal to the volume of the library of congress.

Not saying we *use* our disruptive technologies in the wisest manner…
																- Mark