A brief introduction to my background. I have a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry and worked on battery chemistry during my postdoctoral fellowship. I have since worked as a technical and business analyst and consultant for dozens of Global 2000 companies, and am currently employed exclusively as a technology analyst for a Japanese material science firm.
After having studied various technological growth patterns (i.e. bibliographic analysis, patent filing analysis, revenue growth, etc.) for emerging technologies in each generation that is available for detailed study (past around 1950) a few key points became apparent to me. (1) The technological pulses (described by technology s-curves) get shorter with each successive generation. (2) The market over the last 100 years seems to also behave in this approximate fashion (Supplementary Figure 1). (3) The most foundational technologies for innovation are data storage and transfer. Simply put, you can not build on an idea if you are unaware of the idea the begin with. There is no such thing as "new" ideas, but rather ideas build upon each other. Major technological advances are typically catalyzed by the fall of the previous generation, resulting from periods of isolation and low communication, such as now. When a model is constructed in this likeness, Figure 1 is the result.
Figure 1. Shows the rise and fall of each era in telecommunications. DOW numbers are normalized to 2012 US dollars
I am simply putting this idea out there at the moment and am happy to accept criticism. I am continuing data collection and am looking to write a short book on the history and growth of technology across time in the coming years. Any input or collaboration ideas are welcome.
Supplementary Figure 1. Credit goes to Macrotrends.com. Shows the inflation-adjusted Dow Jones for the past 100 years in current US dollars. Local highs of around 4000, 8000, and 16000 can be seen for each successive generation of communication technology. From this, it would be expected that the Dow Jones would hit around 30-32k before correcting significantly, due to some issue with the cloud era.
