6 decades of innovation

Immersed daily in exponentiality and acceleration, one might start to feel a bit dizzy, right? Just last week, AI heavyweights announced groundbreaking developments (1 million tokens for Gemini, video and GPT-5 for OpenAI, to name a few) with huge potential impacts. It’s been like this since the release of GPT-3.5. It's a race, and we know it's not going to slow down.

My way to pause—and perhaps reflect on what's happening from a "use case" perspective: look back in time. Technological acceleration has always been exponential, but for a long time, we were on the flat part of the curve.

Was I?

Here, my aim is not to write a theoretical and global post about technological progress and innovation but rather to reflect on my subjective “experience”. Like “what did happen that I could not imagine a decade earlier and had a real impact on my life?”

I invite you on a (maybe nostalgic) walk through all the innovations that happened and transformed my lifestyle. For clarity, I was born in the 60s and have worked in tech all my life, which obviously gives me a bias. And as a musician, the impact of tech on music has always interested and concerned me foremost. I've separated the musical part to ease reading if it gets too technical!

The Seventies

My first encounter with what I perceived as an innovative technology impacting my existence was the first 4-function calculators with LED displays (1971). Suddenly, we could multiply and add instantly. You would say 122345 times 4563, and boom, you had the result.

Back then, I was still learning to read logarithm tables and handle slide rulers. At the same time, we had LIP LED watches (1972). Time in digital form. You had to press a button to see the time for 3 seconds, no longer, or it would drain the battery. It was not practical at all, but it was modern, and it has completely disappeared.

There are still nostalgics for Casio liquid crystal watches, though, even a model with an integrated calculator that is still in the catalog. On my Apple Watch, I can simulate that or a Rolex, which is more interesting, even if it's useless.

Calculators proliferated before disappearing as well. Two or three years after the 4-function, I got my first scientific calculator, an HP 25. It was war in prep school between HP and TI. I found the "Reverse Polish Notation" chic and practical. Always a bit snobbish. And you could program a moon landing with 50 program steps. Later, I got a 34C that calculated integrals! ... They ended up "integrated" into smartphones - replaced by software and a UX that mimics the good old days for the nostalgics. As Marc Andreessen said a while back, “software is eating the world”, and it's a good example, not the first we'll see in this walk.

Musician's Corner:

At the time, I used to tinker with my father's Grundig tape recorder, which allowed "sound on sound" like the Revox. And I realized that by recording at half speed, playback was twice as fast (and higher-pitched) when played at normal speed. Eddie Van Halen, here I come !

The Eighties

Discovering computers, Fortran, teletypes in engineering school- I can't count it as a major innovation since it existed well before I put my hands on it (1957). The same goes for the 8088 microprocessors (1978) that I programmed for 18 months before calling it quits.

However, discovering the first Mac (1984) was revolutionary. Printing in bold and italic and doing wysiwyg was plain crazy. Apple had stolen it from Xerox, but I didn't know that yet, and the Xerox Star machines were very expensive anyways. I saw a Mac at a friend's who was doing research at the university, and I still remember that first encounter! 2 years later, I bought one for a project that financed my MBA (100 pages in Word with two floppy drives :-)).

At HEC, I saw my first Multiplan, and that also blew me away. These huge spreadsheets that recalculated themselves by just changing a cell when we were used to programs that spit out numbers on a teletype were crazy. It never left me. 40 years later, I still love building pivot tables with Excel, maybe ChatGPT will put the nails in that coffin.?

In 1987, I started working for ComputerVision, one of the pioneers of CAD, which eventually got bought out by defectors who went on to create a competing product, Parametric Technologies. Life is tough sometimes.

When I got there, CADDS, the software, was still running on a Data General-sourced mainframe, called CGP200, with a custom graphic card (a GPU, but not the Nvidia type …). You could choose an "Oregon pine" finish (seriously) and we called the removable hard disks "salad bowls" - they probably had 10 or 20 megabytes of storage capacity! We swapped one for another depending on the software version we wanted to demo.

The back office was less modern: we wrote our proposals on paper and gave them to a pool of secretaries who had IBM machines... and correction fluid. We wrote memos, received them in in-trays, and came back to the office in the evening to pick up messages noted by the secretary... I quickly preferred to write my proposals myself on my beloved Mac, but I can't really call that a major innovation. I nearly got fired for that though.

A couple ComputerVision managers got Radiocom2000 (1986, 1G analog) as a performance bonus at the end of the year, the first car phones! ?They took up half the trunk of a Renault 25, with calls costing a fortune per minute. I have a fond memory of stopping on the highway in the middle of nowhere after a client meeting to discuss something with the R&D team in Bedford. It was crazy, especially since portable phones were still out of reach.

I had a Minitel at home (1982). The precursor to the internet that allowed Xavier Niel to make a fortune (3615 Ulla, I don't know how it worked, but it generated money); it didn't seem like an extraordinary innovation at the time, and I hardly used it.

The eighties mark the incursion of computing into music and into my musical universe.

MIDI (which allows for data exchange between synths with big DIN plugs from the 60s) arrived in 1983. It made it possible to synchronize all the machines you wanted in real-time and, above all, to store only note information, not sounds. Kind of the same difference between a text file and a scanned page.

Musician's Corner:

I swapped my 4-track digital multitrack (TEAC 244) bought in 1981 with my first internship salary for an 8-track (TASCAM 688) with "midi sync" in 1988.

I recorded digital data on a "sequencer" that ran on a big Mac II. It was “Performer” developed by MOTU (mark of the unicorn, don't ask me how they came up with their company name).

Around the same time, digital sound arrived; AKAI samplers and then the first sampled drum sounds for drum machines. Digidesign was one of the first companies to offer this and later developed ProTools, which is still the reference software for DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations). The first CDs arrived around the same time (1982) – and with that the idea of an entirely digital signal processing chain – digital recorder that directly dumps its bytes onto the CD, no more signal loss and lousy analog to digital converters (Saint Shannon, please help us).

All-in-one digital machines like the Synclavier or the Fairlight CMI made producers and big stars drool. Trevor Horn produced the famous double album by Frankie Goes to Hollywood "Welcome To The Pleasure Dome" (2004) almost entirely on a Fairlight. I spent many nights listening to it on headphones, and it still sounds seriously good today. I would later discover that Daniel Balavoine used the same technology for his album "Sauver l'amour".

Afterward, analog technology regained some of its rights. Between those who hear unpleasant "ultra-harmonics" in CDs and those who appreciate the "natural distortion" of magnetic tape and vinyl, consensus has been hard to find! By 2024, major studios use both ProTools and digital "plug-ins" that often emulate old, expensive, and impossible-to-maintain analog machines, as well as those very machines, tube preamps, and even 24-track tape recorders that aren't worth much but "have the sound."

The arrival of generative AI poses serious questions in this domain, as it does in all other creative fields. What will we do when we can prompt "make me a song in the style of X with the voice of Y and a guitar solo inspired by Z"? This topic is already making headlines and it's just the beginning.

The Nineties

I witnessed the arrival of the first internal company email around 1992. It was on DEC VT220 monochrome terminals. We already had the first laptops with small monochrome screens (the first Compaq dates from 1983). But email in real-time with the US was crazy. Time and space compression. I don't know if it was specialized lines or already the Internet.

The emergence of the internet has been the most improbable thing. Created originally as a military project (ARPANET) with specifications that it had to work even in the event of nuclear war, this gave it a remarkable robustness, but Tim Berners-Lee in his wildest dreams had never imagined it becoming what it is today. This is a fairly recurring pattern in innovation in general and tech in particular. This makes predictions so difficult. At the time, there were several network technologies available, some better thought out for global and commercial uses but they lost to the internet and TCP/IP.

Bezos created Amazon in 1994. The first search engines Yahoo, Altavista, Excite, etc., followed in 1995-1996. Netscape made its famous "deficit" IPO in August 1995 because Jim Clarke needed cash to pay an installment on his yacht under construction.

Two major innovations changed my life around 95-96.

First, the modem. The object had existed for about a decade, but it became a classic accessory for the traveling executive that I was. No need to go back to the office to know what was happening... Once home, you connect, crrr crrr crrr, and two hours later, bam, you can read your emails (Lotus Notes at the time, quite a mess). That was crazy and total bliss. The first file in the chain that tied me to my desk, not the last.

And the second was, of course, the mobile phone. Being able to call anyone from anywhere, what bliss. And what bills, too, at the time, we were far from the "all you can eat for 50 euros".

Armed with a modem and a phone, I could start working from anywhere.

Of course, it blurs the personal/work life boundary quite a bit, especially when you're in Europe and working with the US, but once this Pandora's box was opened, I continued to push the boundaries and still do. I would go crazy in a job where I have to go to the same place every morning, and I don't buy the "you have to be in the office to work well" argument. I've seen people on Facebook for hours at the office with the "panic button" not to get caught by the boss (bad luck when you turn your back to a window :-) ) and people who worked very well being fully remote (like me).

The internet bubble was on the brink of blowing up, but I was oblivious to it. I had a browser on my desktop, a colleague who became the CEO of Netscape France, and I dabbled in speculation (losing a lot in the process) without grasping the scale of what was happening (well, not everyone is Jeff Bezos) but the major upheaval hadn't arrived yet – at least, not for me.

The 2000s

After the "Y2K bug" scare passed, it was back to normal business :-)

The digitization of music would explode with the internet, peer-to-peer sharing, Napster, and the MP3 compression algorithm (even though it was standardized as early as 1991). I can't remember my first CD, but I vividly recall the madness of being able to download any track for free from a stranger's computer with complete impunity. Dematerialization makes theft less "visible," and it remains an issue today, even though major streaming platforms have taken control.

My first Sony MP3 player held 10 MP3 tracks, and downloading them was a nightmare (1999). Listening to music while running through the woods, what a joy! In fact, the idea of "on the go" music wasn't new. The "yé-yé" generation had transistor radios and record players in the 60s, and the compact cassette was patented by Philips in 1963. Sony invented the Walkman in 1979 and the Discman in 1984. But compression algorithms and the internet changed everything. And indeed, Apple would settle the debate by releasing the iPod "1000 songs in your pocket" in 2001.

The iPod was a revolution for my disabled son, born in 1996, who spends most of his time listening to music. We went from lugging around a hundred CDs and a Discman to an iPod (now an iPad). Marvelous.

Musician's Corner

In terms of instruments and amps – it was the revolution of amp modeling. Line6 (later acquired by Yamaha) was founded by French entrepreneurs in the US and released the first digital modeling amp, the AxSys212 in 1996. However, they made a huge splash in 2001 in the market (and in my musical life) with GuitarPort, an audio interface that runs on USB and emulates guitar amps, with a super sleek interface... you can turn the knobs with a mouse :-) I fell in love with it immediately, and I bought their first 100% digital modeling guitar, the Variax, in 2004 and used it for many years. Then came a whole bunch of digital pedalboards, and the famous "Pod," a little red bean that simulates many amps in a small plastic box...

I also bought my first digital camera. That was also crazy, for those of us who had started with film, developing labs, suddenly everything was instant and unlimited.

With my new job in 2000, I managed to get a car with a phone (not a radiocom2000, totally outdated by then) and... a GPS. The GPS in the car was a revolution. Gone were the maps where you never find what you want, the Paris map you hold in one hand while driving... My boss at the time, coming from the US for a visit to France, told me, "one day all of this will be on the internet." Waze was founded in 2008... he was a visionary.

Google started being noticed, a search engine unlike the others but working better than the rest. With its minimalist interface, no one at the time could imagine their trajectory. Yahoo missed buying Facebook in 2006 for $1Bn and botched the negotiation over a few million. It's not just me who makes investment mistakes :-).?

I experimented with online shopping. It was kinda late, Amazon has been around since 1994 and started its operations in France in 2000. Sell-on-the-phone operators like telemarket tried to reposition themselves for online sales, I tried several but it wasn’t a game changer, I still prefered to shop at the supermarket (still do today). However, when I realized I could buy any book in English from Amazon – instead of going to WH Smith on Rue de Rivoli – it was a total game changer. And to that day my wife still complains that we’re getting one parcel a day at our door.

I tinkered a bit with a PalmPilot, the idea was nice but the interface remained "clunky" and I eventually went back to my notebooks.?

The iPhone arrived in January 2007. At that time everyone had Nokias, Motorolas, BlackBerrys for the more "business minded" and then... boom, an object without a keyboard, almost like the monolith from 2001 in miniature. I also remember, we were around it like chickens who had found a knife; As with many Apple products, there would be the unconditional enthusiasts (me) and the naysayers (it will never work, blah blah blah).

Fifteen years later, Apple has sold over a billion iPhones, turned it into a completely versatile device, replacing the camera, video camera, flashlight, e-reader, GPS, MP3 player, etc. It's estimated that there are now more mobile phone subscriptions than humans on Earth.

Amazon released the Kindle the same year. Initially, I was super excited about the total lack of friction (I want a book, I pay, I download, done) but after a few years, I returned to paper.

In terms of communication, we saw the emergence of MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook. I didn't sign up for Facebook until 2012, but my kids were crazy about MySpace (and War of Warcraft...).

And I discovered MSN Messenger with them, a concept that was totally incomprehensible at first but turned out to be very handy for chatting with my daughter who lived with her mother 700 kilometers away from Paris. The innocuous little bubbles simulating dialogue would invade the entire communication space, becoming the standard for all instant messaging and enterprise applications – Slack, Teams...?

It's the same "chat" interface used in generative AI, which for me contributes to the confusion and anthropomorphization. When I have a Teams window and a ChatGPT next to each other, there's no cognitive difference – I type text into an interface and get a response; in one case it's a colleague, in the other an LLM. And with Copilot, it's even worse, everything is in Teams.

Musician's Corner

At the end of the decade, I made a typical musician's about-face. I bought a Class A tube amp, the pinnacle of 50s technology, a beautiful MesaBoogie Lone Star. I had a desire for a "return to the roots," after a decade of digital and modeling technology. Then I saw an ad for the first Fractal Audio modeler in 2008 (the almighty Axe-FX), and on my next trip to the US, I couldn't resist and brought one back. The product was barely finished, but there was a community of fans in "open source" mode around it, and the founder is an absolute genius. By 2024, I'm on the 4th generation and still not tired of it. The Mesa Boogie is gathering dust :-)

2010 – 2020

Amazingly, I don't feel like much revolutionary happened in this decade. Well, I subscribed to Netflix, and it became normal to watch series instead of going to the cinema. We moved from ADSL to fiber, but my kids, who never experienced a modem, think it's never fast enough. Business as usual.

That said, I got on Facebook, then Instagram, WhatsApp, created a blog on WordPress to express my opinion, my iPhone became my main camera, and all my data went into the Apple and Google clouds. Gradually, it started replacing my backup hard drives.

So, my stuff became more and more dematerialised – digital music, digital photos, and all of it managed without me having to worry about it.

The cloud is a huge thing for businesses but almost invisible for individuals. I spent two years conducting workshops on the subject...

I took advantage of the globalization of information: I listened to plenty of podcasts while running (still do), watch TED Talks, and that's what led me to AI.

Sam Harris and Nick Bostrom have quite terrifying positions on the subject, as does James Barrat's book. Kurzweil is much more optimistic (see my posts on the subject). DeepMind and AlphaGo fascinate me, but they don't change my daily life, not yet, or in invisible ways.

I'm not talking here about blockchain, cryptos, and web 3.0 even though they are big topics because their impact on my life has been limited – just got burned by a blockchain startup that folded before paying my fees. :-)

2020 to Now

Well, we're right in the middle of it :-) For me, the trigger was, as for many people, ChatGPT3.5. A friend called me and said, "try this thing," and boom, I was hooked.

Now, I don't do anything without AI by my side. I did use ChatGPT to research all the dates and nitty gritty and of course to translate. I did not want it to interfere with the content however.

Key Trends

Looking back at all this, what trends can we identify?

• Simplification of access to information. From the city library and the home encyclopedia, to the web and Wikipedia, to LLMs. Essentially, all of humanity now has access to all the information created by humanity.
• Compression of time and distance. Everything becomes instantaneous and nearby. The messages I send are received immediately. I work every day in real-time with colleagues across several continents. I can see the face of loved ones thousand of miles away
• Explosion of data creation. I have 90,000 photos on iCloud taken over 20 years.
• Extension of cognitive systems through technology. My smartphone has become an indispensable accessory to my functioning. My glasses too :-). It's easy to imagine what's coming next.

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What's next?

Everyone says the next decade will accelerate even more than all the previous ones. Sure. We're in 2024 – almost halfway through – and generative AI, which no one saw coming, at least not like this, is everywhere, a threat and opportunity for all.

And then there's the impact of Apple's headset release. Will it revolutionize the market as Apple did for phones, MP3 players, tablets, watches? Too early to say, but the potential is there. I would be delighted to have video calls with avatars of my colleagues rather than pixelated thumbnails of their faces. To explore a digital space together. I think the applications have not yet been invented (considering video games don't interest me).

I caught myself thinking it would be really cool to have a 24x7 companion AI, sharing the same experience (seeing, hearing) as me and with whom I could discuss this experience. For example, "can you give me the harmonic grid of the song we're hearing right now?" or "hey, I'm thinking about something, can you give me information on it?"... I know assistant agents are coming, an AI that will help me manage the mess in my emails, and my hard drive, it will save me a ton of time.

These are "small ideas" probably because it's always hard to imagine what we can do with a technology, unless you're Asimov or Philip K. Dick. Manolis Kellis, a researcher in "computational biology" at MIT (https://web.mit.edu/manoli/), interviewed by Lex Fridman, has an interesting idea: using generative AI to replace the "little voice in our head" we all have, which judges and comments, and make it more useful, objective, and helping us to progress. I would like that.

In the same vein, being able to have a window into the mental model of others (with their consent, of course) – to slip into another's experience and even have a "translator" that neutralizes our biases and allows us to communicate more clearly.

And to get rid of the keyboard, a relic from 1874. If I could write what I think without going through the keyboard, how much time I would save! Advances in speech-to-text systems will probably allow us to replace the keyboard with voice, but speaking makes noise, thinking is silent!

And I eagerly await the marriage of generative AI and robotics because a reasonably intelligent and attentive robot could provide more autonomy and a more pleasant life, freed from community constraints for the disabled around us.

What Doesn't Change?

This post is totally subjective. I don't claim to be a chronicler of anything other than my personal experience, assuming it allows you to reflect on yours, if you're interested.

Reflecting on the fact that the piano keyboard was designed in 1710 and it doesn't bother many people, I wondered what objects and activities are unaffected by technological exponentiation. There are some!

I have about fifteen electric guitars; their electronics and design date back to the 50s (the famous Stratocaster, dear to Hendrix, Gilmour, Beck, and Clapton, was officially released in 1954 and not much has changed since) and all attempts at innovation by manufacturers have generally ended in commercial failures.

I still have tube amps for the guitar, even though I prefer my digital modeler.

I lift weights with dumbbells and barbells, whose technology hasn't evolved much since Pumping Iron. If you go to a CrossFit gym, the only vaguely technical objects will be a rowing machine and an "assault bike".

I run with the least technical shoes possible – but I have a heart rate monitor, which was a brilliant and very useful tool when it appeared in the early 80s. And I bike – which is an object that has evolved very little over the decades, except for electrification, of course, which I do without.

I don't have an electric car yet, just a hybrid.

I cook in cast iron pans, grandmother style, which weigh a ton and rust if not dried. After trying all possible and imaginable modern coatings.

I read paper books.

I've probably missed things that are revolutionary for other people. And you?

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