Identifying watershed moments in technology

A watershed moment is an event that marks a significant turning point or the beginning of a new stage.

The term originated to describe a dividing line in the landscape, such as a ridge of high ground (historically referred to as a shed). On one side of the watershed water drains into one river system or lake and on the other side it drains into a separate system.

Watershed moments in technology are key breakthroughs that fundamentally alter the course of industries and even society. Examples include the invention of the printing press, the telegraph, and the telephone; the development of electricity and the success of Westinghouse’s alternative current over Edison’s direct current; the birth of the computer in the 1930s and the creation of the internet in the 1960s.

Closer to the present day we have the launch of Amazon Web Services in 2006 and the smartphone revolution spearheaded by Apple in 2007. At one point the launch of Bitcoin in 2009 appeared to be a watershed moment for blockchain technology. The jury is still out on that one but for the moment blockchain’s usefulness beyong cryptocurrency appears to be limited.

For AI there have been multiple watershed moments including the success of AlphaGo in 2016 and the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. With the benefit of hindsight, these watershed moments in AI can appear like summers followed by periods of wintry dissapointment when AI fails to deliver all that was hoped for.

The purpose of this site is to explore important developments in technology and assess their likely impact.