The Rise and Fall of Civilizations of Technology.

Rome existed between 200bc and 400ad, 600 years of order and culture; it took less than 100 years for the massive civilization to fracture and collapse into nothing, pushing Europe into the dark ages. A thousand years later, architects modeled their creations after what the romans had built, great pillars line the facades of buildings and denote learnedness, logic, and achievement as Rome was still considered to be the pinnacle of human culture. How could something so valuable disintegrate into nothing, why would the Romans leave Rome?

There are tons of theories; lead pipes poisoning people, aliens, aliens with pipes, or social entropy. Civilizations are just groupings of interrelated interdependent systems that function together and are called one thing. Western Europe, France, Vancouver… is all systems with countless interrelated parts working together. A condition may exist wherein the critical parts of the system begin to fail, bringing with them the ones nearby and causing the disassociation of the interrelated parts into something else. Generally, the more complicated a system is, the greater the risk of collapse. Rome was a massive system with little tendrils of trade reaching near and very far. A massively long rope only needs to break in one place to be rendered worthless. The Technology giants we see today, more than likely will be gone by tomorrow.

One of the versions of Microsoft Windows will be the last, a new iPhone will be unpopular, your favourite app will fall silently in disuse, and Google might Google their last query. All of the aforementioned systems are large, made of countless interconnected elements pinging and whirring together to make a single artifact. The larger the icon, the more room it needs to make a change.  Public favour may eventually sway toward a new O/S based almost entirely online, Apple and Microsoft tech giants are giant container ships in the sea of commerce, their slow lumbering turns will be too slow and they will be overtaken by a dozen tiny start-ups whizzing by. Changes will be tiny, ideological, and will bear great consequences for existing companies.

America-Online once defined access to the internet, Yahoo was once the portal to information, and CompUSA… existed. There is a much greater likelihood that manufacturers will stand the test of time far better than holders of intellectual property like Apple and Microsoft. Toshiba, Dell, and HP can quietly start building computers for whoever is the most significant, and Intel has a 25 year head start on anyone that attempts to make the next great CPU. The moral of the story is; Be prepared for change, all empires will eventually collapse; empires of technology just do it quicker…