Technologies from the last 20 years are transforming their industries, from automotive and sports to artificial intelligence. Engineers and programmers from all over the world took part in the development of these technologies. This shows that the world is globalizing and domestic developers do not stand aside from these processes. Technology is changing our world every day: simplifying work, speeding up processes, and saving lives. And every year they become more and more efficient.
What Does Progress Hold?
In 1973, the whole world was struck by the invention of Motorola employee Martin Cooper, who introduced the world’s first cell phone. In 1984, one of the first personal computers appeared, the Macintosh. In September 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin changed the world by showing the Google search engine. Three years later, Steve Jobs once again surprised the world with his iPod. It contained a record of a thousand songs at the time. And many more examples can be provided here, yet, you’ll probably need several essay writers for hire to have them all listed. What’s even more intriguing is that most of those inventors were attending classes and anticipating the finals as mere students at the time of their breakthrough. Here are a couple of their stories.
Students Who Changed the World
Bill Gates. Bill Gates has been fascinated by computers since childhood. At school, he devoted almost all his free time to programming. He also wrote his first computer game in Basic as a teenager. This became a starting point for Bill’s professional success. The practical side attracted him much more, so Gates studied at Harvard University for only two years. Here he began to work on creating operating systems.
Later, Bill Gates created a software development company named Microsoft with Paul Allen. The first result of the company’s work was the Microsoft FORTRAN operating system. In the mid-80s, Microsoft released the very first version of Windows. The new program differed from all previous competitors in graphic design. The computer age of Windows has begun.
Steve Jobs. While working at Hewlett-Packard, he met Stephen Wozniak, his future colleague at Apple. On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer. The first personal computer, which was presented by Jobs and Wozniak, was Apple I, later a new computer was created, Apple II, designed for a wider range of users.
Apple began to grow and in 1980 became a joint-stock company and conducted a successful initial public offering. As a result, Jobs became a millionaire at 25 years old.
Mark Zuckerberg. The first interest in computers awoke in him in 10 years. His father gave him a PC and showed him basic elements of the programming language Atari BASIC. Two years later, Zuckerberg created his first full-fledged software product called “ZuckNet”. After graduating from elementary school, Zuckerberg entered the prestigious boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy. While studying at Harvard, in the 2nd year he created a program for CourseMatch students. Based on this software, Zuckerberg decided to create a communication masterpiece in the form of a social network “Facebook”. It was intended to expand the communication of Harvard students on the local network. The Facebook project has grown beyond the Harvard campus and captivated a million users. And in 4 years it has become the world’s first social network.
Daniel Ek from Stockholm has been fascinated by two things since childhood – music, and business. At the age of four, he received his first guitar. At five – the first computer. He became interested in programming and at the age of 14 he started his first business: he offered a friend to make a website 100 times cheaper than market prices. The result was not bad, an acquaintance recommended it to his acquaintances, and soon the orders poured in with each other. In 2005, Ek founded a startup called Advertigo. It analyzed users’ preferences and published advertisements sharpened for them. Later, it was rebranded to Spotify and started specializing in music preferences. In 2018, Spotify was valued at $26.5 billion, making Ek a billionaire.
Jawed Karim, Steve Chen, and Chad Hurley have collectively founded YouTube in 2005 while being interns at PayPal. YouTube was based on Flash Video, FLV technology, thanks to which it was relatively fast to upload videos up to 10 minutes long. The release of YouTube in wide distribution marked the beginning of massive video hosting development. Such services did not exist at that time, so the site quickly began to gain popularity. Already in July 2006, its audience reached 100 million users. Around that period, Google became interested in the service and in the fall of the same year bought it for $1.65 billion.
Behold The Future
The modern world is extremely complex, contradictory, and dynamic. It is constantly undergoing profound and multifaceted changes and transformations. Mankind is constantly getting rid of outdated forms of social life and acquires new, more effective models. However, this progress is not unequivocal. It is characterized by both upward and downward trends. Thankfully, there are people who transfer progress in the right direction.
Michael is a passionate writer who has expertise in a variety of fields – from relationships and motivation theories to technology and education. He cares about what he writes and has a great eye for details. His hobbies include programming and reading.
