There are technologies everybody thinks are cool, and there are technologies nobody thinks about at all.
In the first category you can find things like flying cars, holographic displays, and missions to Mars. In the second category are things like air conditioning, washing machines and toilet seats.
The wonderful irony is that the less cool technologies tend to be the ones that have truly changed peoples’ lives. It is their very success that has made them invisible.
Maybe one measure of the success of a technology is how it has managed to disappear from our consciousness. Perhaps we will know that virtual and augmented reality are truly successful when they pass a simple test: We no longer notice them.
You might enjoy my talk on Marking Theory, under the guise of “Hidden Cyborgs.” The transcript is there also, if you are interested in a shorter read:
http://sally.com/wiki/Hidden_Cyborgs
In it, I talk about how technologies that seem new, often are absorbed in the culture (become unmarked.)
Thanks Sally — great talk!!