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Technology changes. The electric light bulb supplanted the candle in the late 1800s. Movies replaced live performance a century ago. Radio news broadcasts and movie news shorts augmented news delivery in the 1920s. Television displaced radio over half a century ago. Electronic calculators replaced slide rules in the 1970s. Email replaced regular mail in the 1980s. Now instant messaging replaces email for the younger generation. Text messaging emerges as an alternative to telephoning. Cell phones free us from land lines and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) replaces the old style telephone system. Television morphs into HDTV. Satellite radio and internet radio has overtaken broadcast radio. iPods, MP3 players and TiVos are taking market share away from real-time content providers like television networks and broadcast radio presaging the end of the era of mass media. All of your computer’s applications are on the verge of being replaced by rich internet applications (RIA) that you access across the internet via your browser.

What was new is soon outdated. What was innovative is soon passé. It often feels like we are on a treadmill of technology or a roller coaster ride that never ends as we careen from one great or not so great new product or service to another, to another, to another… The ride is picking up speed. We never have time to fully digest any of them before another new item claims our attention. We all become victims of technology deficit disorder, TDD.

We become dependent upon the technology. We adapt. Sometimes we become addicted. We need to be connected all the time. We sign up for email or internet services delivered over our cell phones because we have to know now. We commute but stay connected even though we are rude and disturbing to our fellow passengers as we talk too loudly on our cell phones in public places. We go on vacation but we never disconnect from the office. If you watch a BlackBerry owner in a meeting you see what I call the BlackBerry twitch. They constantly play with the device’s thumbwheel to check their email because whatever is happening in the ether is more important than the face-to-face meeting they are attending.

When the technology fails, and it always does, we become inconvenienced, frustrated or worse.

A technologist’s continuing education requirements make other professional CE requirements pale in comparison, whether that other professional is a doctor, lawyer or accountant. News accounts of new technologies that a technologist needs to know are unceasing. Finding information about the new technology and educating yourself is a full-time job in itself. For example, if you are involved in web development you need to know HTML, which was already replaced with XHTML, and is augmented by CSS, and you need to know PHP and MySQL, PERL, Flash, JavaScript, XML, and then AJAX and Ruby on Rails. Web 2.0 replaces Web 1.0. Who knows what you need to know tomorrow.

I have learned a lot since I worked on my first big technology project back in the 1970s as part of Citibank’s team that developed the first modern ATM and large scale ATM network. One of the most important lessons is that technology changes – always! So we should treat it as disposable because we will be replacing it with newer, better stuff very soon. What does this mean for you as you consider buying that new computer, computer application, iPod or HDTV? It means buy the least expensive version you can. Buy the easiest-to-learn and easiest-to-use device or application you can. You will be discarding it very soon. I promise.