[ti:A Whole New World for How We Interact With Gadgets] [ar:Steve Ember] [al:Technology Report] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English [00:03.12]Technology Report. [00:05.12]As the year comes to an end, [00:07.41]we talk about some [00:08.96]of the top technology developments [00:11.35]of the last ten years. [00:14.24]The technological revolution [00:16.48]is changing the way we work and play. [00:20.36]Mobile phones became smartphones, [00:23.84]with abilities like computers. [00:26.18]Many people started reading books [00:29.78]on electronic readers. [00:31.87]Televisions became high definition [00:35.10]and the screens became flat. [00:38.04]Digital music players got smaller [00:41.02]in size but large enough [00:43.87]for people to download [00:45.71]their entire music collections. [00:48.05]Worldwide, broadband subscriptions [00:52.23]passed five hundred million. [00:54.32]And at least two billion people [00:57.62]are expected to be online [01:00.00]by the end of this year. [01:02.39]Stephen Baker is the vice president [01:06.03]of industry analysis for the consumer [01:08.91]electronics market research group NPD. [01:13.14]He says the technological developments [01:16.43]of the twenty-first century [01:18.53]have brought about some historic [01:20.83]advances in consumer electronics. [01:24.56]STEPHEN BAKER: "Ten years ago [01:25.55]is irrelevant in consumer electronics. [01:28.69]Ten years ago might as well be [01:29.93]a hundred years. [01:32.42]Certainly if you look back [01:34.16]at the way people interacted [01:36.20]with electronics in two thousand [01:38.34]and the way they interact [01:39.84]with them today, [01:40.93]there is no comparison. [01:42.32]"Ten years ago we didn't [01:43.67]have flat-panel televisions. [01:45.11]We really didn't have mobile [01:46.95]Web devices or smartphones. [01:49.24]We didn't have e-book readers. [01:51.69]Very, very few consumers [01:53.53]had notebook computers. [01:55.12]There was no Wi-Fi. [01:56.67]Just not even a similar experience [01:58.96]to what the world [02:00.85]was like ten years ago." [02:02.19]Bruce Bachenheimer is with [02:04.58]the MIT Enterprise Forum in New York. [02:07.96]He is also the director [02:10.10]of entrepreneurship at Pace University. [02:13.24]We spoke with him about [02:15.28]what he believes are the most [02:17.32]important developments [02:18.76]of the twenty-first century. [02:20.70]BRUCE BACHENHEIMER: "If I were looking [02:22.25]at technology that has really [02:24.98]impacted us over the last ten years, [02:27.42]I would go in order: [02:29.47]mobile computing, the proliferation [02:32.91]of digital media content, [02:34.15]broadband -- mobile and at-home access [02:38.48]-- social media platforms [02:40.62]and user-generated content, [02:42.61]cloud computing, [02:44.55]digital photography and GPS. [02:48.43]And what I mean by GPS [02:49.93]is GPS for the masses, [02:51.47]although global positioning systems [02:53.51]have been around for quite a while." [02:54.96]Mr. Bachenheimer says [02:56.85]all of these things have worked together [02:59.29]to revolutionize technology. [03:01.79]And, he says the technology [03:04.43]is constantly changing, [03:06.32]faster than at any other time in history. [03:09.95]BRUCE BACHENHEIMER: "The life cycle [03:12.04]of these products are so much shorter. [03:14.28]If you look at having a telephone, [03:16.37]a home phone back in the nineteen fifties, [03:19.42]sixties, seventies and eighties, [03:21.11]it was exactly the same phone. [03:22.10]Nothing changed for three or four decades. [03:25.26]"Basically you had a choice of three colors, [03:28.00]tan, white or black. [03:29.64]And you could either have it mounted [03:31.58]on a wall or on a table top, [03:33.67]whereas now you look at something [03:36.76]like a cell phone. [03:38.11]How many people have a cell phone [03:39.40]that's more than a year or two old?" [03:41.24]And that's the VOA Special English [03:44.53]Technology Report, [03:46.17]written by June Simms. [03:48.11]Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, [03:51.00]YouTube and iTunes [03:53.50]at VOA Learning English. [03:56.38]I'm Steve Ember.