How Technology Has Already Changed the World in My Lifetime
By Noah Smith | Feb 15, 2026
In an era defined by rapid technological advancement, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the pace of change. The recent explosion of AI has dramatically transformed industries, most notably the software sector, within just a few months. This whirlwind of innovation brings a sense of "future shock," a term coined decades ago that describes the disorientation people feel in the face of rapid social and technological change. Reflecting on these transformations, I’m reminded that many of the colossal shifts shaping our world today did not start with AI — they have been unfolding since the dawn of the internet, smartphones, and social media.
A Reflective Repost on Radical Change
Back in 2023, when large language models (LLMs) were only beginning to impact society, I wrote about how digital technologies had already fundamentally altered everyday life. The internet changed the world I knew as a child into something almost unrecognizable. While AI is now reshaping how we think, learn, and work, the internet and related digital tools have already wrought deep and lasting changes in how we socialize and present ourselves to the world. Since humans are inherently social creatures, both shifts are monumental — and it’s challenging to gauge which will ultimately prove more transformative.
Past Perspectives on Technological Change
In 1970, Alvin Toffler published Future Shock, highlighting people’s anxieties about the accelerating pace of change. Interestingly, most of us seem to cope by minimizing these changes in our day-to-day lives, noticing only incremental shifts from year to year. Yet, looking across decades, the transformation becomes striking.
Tyler Cowen, in a widely read 2023 article on generative AI, argued that for most of our lives, the world has lacked truly radical technological change and that we have effectively lived "outside of history" within a bubble of American hegemony and relative safety. Economist Paul Krugman echoed a similar sentiment in 2011, pointing out how kitchen appliances barely evolved over recent decades compared with the leaps in living standards between 1918 and 1957. However, when I look back to 1990, I see enormous change already having taken place—primarily driven by information technology such as computers, the internet, social media, and smartphones.
How Has Technology Transformed Life?
Screen Time Has Consumed Our Lives
In the 1970s, a sci-fi movie imagining humans entranced by glowing handheld screens would have seemed fantastical — even countercultural. Today, it is reality. When I hang out with friends or dine out, phones often command attention more than the physical company or surroundings. Between 2008 and 2018, average daily time Americans spend on social media more than doubled, topping six hours a day, with about one-third online almost constantly.
While this constant screen time may lower productivity by encouraging distractions during work, the bigger effect is a fundamental shift of human life away from offline, physical interactions and toward a constructed digital world — a kind of virtual reality emerging in everyday life.
New Ways of Socializing: From Neighborhoods to Networks
Unlike television, which offered passive consumption, the internet enables interactive social bonds across vast distances. Online communities and dating apps have largely supplanted traditional, geographically based social networks. For example, dating apps have become the dominant method for meeting romantic partners, replacing friends and workplaces.
This shift could reshape cities and nations, which traditionally rely on contiguous physical territories to organize social and political life. It might explain, at least partly, some of the division and strife seen today — people increasingly identify with distant communities rather than their physical neighbors.
Never Getting Lost
Walking into wilderness or unfamiliar cities once entailed the risk and thrill of getting lost. Today, GPS and map apps have eliminated this experience for most of us. There is no longer a need to memorize directions, landmarks, or street names; as long as your phone has battery, navigation is effortless.
This convenience comes with a tradeoff: pervasive location tracking. Whether by tech giants or governments, our movements can be followed constantly, raising privacy concerns especially in less free societies.
Mystery and Wonder Are Replaced by Instant Access to Knowledge
Two decades ago, satisfying curiosity required trips to libraries or flipping through encyclopedias. Now, a simple internet search delivers images, information, and tutorials on any subject imaginable right to our pockets—whether it’s the Matterhorn’s photo or how to fix an appliance.
This has revolutionized what knowledge means in human life. Where once having facts memorized was crucial, today access and the ability to retrieve information instantly matter more.
Looking Ahead
The rapid technological changes we experience today are part of longer-term transformations that began decades ago and continue to accelerate. AI’s recent advances may overshadow earlier shifts, but they stand on foundations laid by the internet and smartphones, which have already redefined social connection, personal identity, and interaction with the world.
As Alvin Toffler predicted, adapting to future shock requires embracing change instead of resisting it. Understanding how far we’ve come provides context and perhaps some reassurance, even as we navigate an uncertain but exciting technological future.
Photo credit: Nataev via Wikimedia Commons
