I couldn’t wait to get to the office this morning. The reason is because I was excited to see if my downloads completed overnight. Among others, I am downloading Season 5 of “Entourage”, the complete works of George Michael, Celine Dion, Dido, and James Last, and my favorite – a whole 95 episodes of “The Muppet Show”. When I look at the statistics on my computer, I have downloaded 10 GB or data and uploaded 5 GB of data. Part of the excitement is because until a few days ago, Safaricom would sell 1 GB of downloaded data for KShs. 2,500. Now, for KShs. 1,000 you have unlimited internet access for 7 days. In just 2 days, I have downloaded data worth over KShs. 25,000!

For me, the proliferation of the Internet and the mobile phone are among the top indicators of just how much things can change in a few years. Slightly over 10 years ago, we would leave a 1 MB download to run overnight for 2 reasons; One, because it would take hours, and Two, because it was only at night when there would be a good chance that the download would complete successfully without timing out. It could take up to a week of daily attempts to successfully download a 1 MB software using a computer modem over the Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation’s telephone line. Of course back then having a land line was a great achievement.

In 1990, I met a girl who had a key like none I had ever seen before. When I enquired what the key was used for, she said, “It is for my family’s home computer.” At that time, I had never seen a computer, and I couldn’t believe that anyone might have one at home. And from her description, I imagined that a computer had to look like a TV, but my deduction led me to conclude that it required an ignition key to turn on, just like a car!

In 1999, I was ecstatic at buying my first computer – a Pentium 1 with 4.3 GB hard disk. I remember the Dixon my Tech savvy friend telling me, “The hard disk in this computer has so much space that even your children will never fill it with data!” Given that the largest storage medium I had at my disposal was the 1.44 MB floppy disk, that was easy to believe. Now, I don’t have children yet and have already filled hard disks with hundreds of GB worth of data.

From how we know it today, how different will the world be in 20 years?