If you have been paying careful attention to the march (or perhaps it is more of a fast run, or even a high speed chase) of technology over the past few years, you have undoubtedly noticed that by the time your laptop starts to mess up with age (and it happens, even to the best of them), its internal technology is over the hill to the point where you can just barely get anything when you try to sell it. Granted, ever since the industrial revolution, technology has been a very unforgiving mistress. But in recent years, if you went into a five year coma you would wake up into a world where it seemed as if a lot of subtle things had changed.
For starters, consider Moore’s Law. This old theorem states that the speed of processors is going to double about every 18 months. You might also want to consider that despite the fact that it has been proven time and again (and again) for over 40 years, it is showing no signs of slowing down or stopping right now. With modern technologies which can move at that sort of a pace, it is really no suprise that technology moves about as fast as the bullets which come out of a high powered rifle.
However, technology is moving quickly only because this is what we all want it to do. If you notice, the technology in many things (such as car engines) is not moving nearly as quickly as that of the most modern microprocessors. If you want a great example of how quickly technology is moving, consider that twenty years ago, the fastest desktop computers on the market had roughly as much storage space as a low end smart phone does today. With differences of that great an extent, it is a wonder that anybody can keep up with where technology’s headed.