Technological change

The way we communicate, produce, and relate to technology is evolving quickly. Tell me something I don’t know, you’ll say.That’s where Benedict Evans, a prominent tech guru from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (‘a16z’) in Silicon Valley, comes in.

In a recent presentation at the World Bank (Mobile is Eating the World) Evans shared inspiring, and at times, unnerving insights on how technology is shaping our world and how it might impact the global development community.

Here are some key takeaways. Halfway to connecting everyone. There are now 2.5 billion smartphones in the world, for 5.5 billion population of age 14 years and older. This deployment has followed what is known in the tech world as an “S curve” - slow at first, when mobile looked like a crazy idea, then accelerating, and now reaching a plateau. Its economic implications are staggerin. Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon are now ten times the scale of Microsoft... — blog.wb.org/blogs