While it is undoubtedly true that there is upward momentum in, for example, computer hardware technology- every year they are a third to twice as fast and hold impressively larger amounts of memory than the year before- it is really the expanding applications of technology that changes our lives the most. This might be referred to a grid (or a matrix) if you want to get fancy. But hardly any technology grows upward from a base. Rather, it expands outward via exploitation of possibilities.

It isn’t a new concept at all. Once Columbus sailed to the Caribbean you could hardly bat an eye before Europe was colonizing much of the world. Once petroleum became widely used, it began to literally make its physical presence in every corner of modern life. Once public education became compulsory in America, the whole country suddenly got a lot smarter and started inventing things.

If you are an average citizen in a modern country, or even underdeveloped and developed ones, you would be amazed by how large your digital footprint has already become. Because how ink, film, pressure, heat, and chemicals used to be utilized by tools that read and recorded the things that we did, nearly all of this is digital now. But even more than that, people are continually finding ways to apply digital technology to actually create new wants and needs, and to pressure more people to be available all of the time. This widespread and disparate application of technology can be referred to as filling in the sectors of a grid; in fact, we are ever expanding the grid by creating new sectors. As we make digital technology in response to our wants, we in turn respond to new possibilities that the technology offers. The computer age, in other words, is here to stay.