Close Menu
TechCentralTechCentral

    Subscribe to the newsletter

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    Facebook X (Twitter) YouTube LinkedIn
    WhatsApp Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentralTechCentral
    • News

      MultiChoice may unbundle SuperSport from DStv

      12 June 2025

      MVNO boom is reshaping South Africa’s mobile market

      12 June 2025

      South African law is failing gig-economy workers

      12 June 2025

      MultiChoice’s TV empire shrinks – but its ‘side hustles’ are holding strong

      12 June 2025

      MultiChoice is bleeding subscribers

      11 June 2025
    • World

      Qualcomm shows off new chip for AI smart glasses

      11 June 2025

      Trump tariffs to dim 2025 smartphone shipments

      4 June 2025

      Shrimp Jesus and the AI ad invasion

      4 June 2025

      Apple slams EU rules as ‘flawed and costly’ in major legal pushback

      2 June 2025

      Mark Zuckerberg has finally found a use for his metaverse

      30 May 2025
    • In-depth

      Grok promised bias-free chat. Then came the edits

      2 June 2025

      Digital fortress: We go inside JB5, Teraco’s giant new AI-ready data centre

      30 May 2025

      Sam Altman and Jony Ive’s big bet to out-Apple Apple

      22 May 2025

      South Africa unveils big state digital reform programme

      12 May 2025

      Is this the end of Google Search as we know it?

      12 May 2025
    • TCS

      TechCentral Nexus S0E1: Starlink, BEE and a new leader at Vodacom

      8 June 2025

      TCS+ | The future of mobile money, with MTN’s Kagiso Mothibi

      6 June 2025

      TCS+ | AI is more than hype: Workday execs unpack real human impact

      4 June 2025

      TCS | Sentiv, and the story behind the buyout of Altron Nexus

      3 June 2025

      TCS | Signal restored: Unpacking the Blue Label and Cell C turnaround

      28 May 2025
    • Opinion

      Beyond the box: why IT distribution depends on real partnerships

      2 June 2025

      South Africa’s next crisis? Being offline in an AI-driven world

      2 June 2025

      Digital giants boost South African news media – and get blamed for it

      29 May 2025

      Solar panic? The truth about SSEG, fines and municipal rules

      14 April 2025

      Data protection must be crypto industry’s top priority

      9 April 2025
    • Company Hubs
      • Africa Data Centres
      • AfriGIS
      • Altron Digital Business
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Altron Group
      • Arctic Wolf
      • AvertITD
      • Braintree
      • CallMiner
      • CYBER1 Solutions
      • Digicloud Africa
      • Digimune
      • Domains.co.za
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • Incredible Business
      • iONLINE
      • Iris Network Systems
      • LSD Open
      • NEC XON
      • Network Platforms
      • Next DLP
      • Ovations
      • Paracon
      • Paratus
      • Q-KON
      • SkyWire
      • Solid8 Technologies
      • Telit Cinterion
      • Tenable
      • Vertiv
      • Videri Digital
      • Wipro
      • Workday
    • Sections
      • AI and machine learning
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud services
      • Contact centres and CX
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Electronics and hardware
      • Energy and sustainability
      • Enterprise software
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Lifestyle
      • Motoring
      • Public sector
      • Retail and e-commerce
      • Science
      • SMEs and start-ups
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Events
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home » Duncan McLeod » The digital decade

    The digital decade

    By Editor11 October 2011
    Twitter LinkedIn Facebook WhatsApp Email Telegram Copy Link
    News Alerts
    WhatsApp

    [By Duncan McLeod]

    Shortly after 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst, a pall was cast over the technology industry. Internet companies ran out of funding and hit the wall, the Nasdaq crashed and is still valued at a fraction of what it was at the height of the dot-com investment hysteria, and a wave of consolidation followed in the IT sector, both locally and abroad.

    It’s worth casting an eye back over the past decade and taking a look at just how far we’ve come in technology. Many of the grand ideas dreamt up a decade ago by those dot-com mavericks are now coming to fruition.

    Who would have imagined that 10 years after the bubble burst that a social media network — Facebook — would sign up 800m users and have an implied valuation of almost US$100bn? Or that Apple, just starting to turn the corner after near bankruptcy in the late 1990s, would a decade later blow past Microsoft and Exxon Mobil to become America’s most valuable company with $70bn of cash in the bank and with most of its profits coming from two product categories — the smartphone and the tablet computer — that didn’t exist at the time?

    Ten years ago, most of us were still browsing the Web using Mozilla or Netscape Navigator. Windows XP hadn’t shipped yet, so most computer users were using either Windows 95/98 or Windows 2000 and, at least in homes, connecting to the Internet through dial-up. Mobile data cost R50/MB or more and the thought of using a cellphone network as a primary Internet connection was not a consideration.

    Today, hundreds of millions of people — it will soon be in the billions — carry smart devices in their pockets that are more powerful than most computers were at the turn of the century. With the swipe of a finger and a few keystrokes, virtually all the information ever created by mankind is available from almost anywhere on the planet where there is wireless coverage. And that includes the top of Mount Everest, from where — in May this year — renowned mountaineer and alpinist Kenton Cool became the first person to tweet from the summit of the world’s highest peak.

    In many ways, technology in the first decade of the new millennium was driven by three megatrends: Moore’s Law, which has meant computers have continued to get exponentially more powerful while prices fall; the consumerisation of IT, in no small part due to companies like Apple; and the proliferation of cheap broadband Internet access almost everywhere, ushering in new models of computing for both consumers and companies.

    New industries have emerged on the back of this: Google, founded just 15 years ago, is worth almost $200bn today, its success built on selling keywords to advertisers. And Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks have transformed the Internet from a one-way medium into a bidirectional flow of information, changing the way we socialise and communicate as a species.

    Broadband networks are altering the way corporate IT functions as well. Cloud computing, where computing resources are made available online — in public clouds using the Internet, in private clouds inside companies, or a hybrid of the two models — is changing the world of corporate information systems.

    Cloud computing is regarded by many as the third big wave in the computer industry. The first was the mainframe era, where powerful and expensive server computers were used in conjunction with “dumb” terminals on the desktop. It was an era thoroughly dominated by IBM.

    Then, in the 1980s and 1990s, Microsoft and Intel turned this model on its head, ushering in the era of client-server computing, where desktop computers and laptops became much more powerful and mainframes became the preserve of the banks and other big companies.

    Now, ubiquitous and high-speed networks are leading to the third wave, where computing is delivered as a resource in a utility-type model, as a service over a network, much like electricity. End users don’t care where in the “cloud” they’re getting their services — applications, bandwidth, processing time, storage and memory. All they care about is that they’re available over the network when they need them.

    The idea is that this can save companies money and streamline corporate IT systems — computing resources are centralised in data centres, they can be optimised, fewer skills are needed, and so on. The same thing is happening in the consumer space, perhaps even more so. The line between client-side devices and applications and online services is becoming much less clear. As broadband gets cheaper and more ubiquitous, people won’t think twice about accessing online resources and sharing media-rich information with the world, even while on the go.

    What will the next decade hold? If one looks at the radical changes of the past 10 years, it’s almost impossible to predict what 2021 will look like. What does seem certain, though, is that we’ll look back on 2011 as that quaint time before everyone on the planet was connected at high speed to everyone else — and to all human knowledge in a global “digital nervous system”.

    • Duncan McLeod is editor of TechCentral, SA’s technology news leader
    • This column was first published in MTN Business’s customer magazine, Di@logue
    • Subscribe to our free daily newsletter
    • Follow us on Twitter or on Facebook


    Apple Duncan McLeod Exxon Mobil Facebook Google IBM Intel Microsoft Mozilla Netscape Twitter
    Subscribe to TechCentral Subscribe to TechCentral
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email Copy Link
    Previous ArticleE.tv slams M-Net over digital TV
    Next Article Unbundling will only benefit ‘urban rich’

    Related Posts

    Qualcomm shows off new chip for AI smart glasses

    11 June 2025

    IBM sets sights on practical quantum computing by 2029

    11 June 2025

    WeThinkCode secures R35-million Google.org grant to nurture AI talent

    10 June 2025
    Company News

    SAPHILA 2025 – transcending with purpose, connection and AI-powered vision

    13 June 2025

    Building a cyber-resilient culture from the boardroom to the front lines

    12 June 2025

    How South Africa’s municipalities are finally getting smart

    12 June 2025
    Opinion

    Beyond the box: why IT distribution depends on real partnerships

    2 June 2025

    South Africa’s next crisis? Being offline in an AI-driven world

    2 June 2025

    Digital giants boost South African news media – and get blamed for it

    29 May 2025

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2025 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.