Charted: The Speed at Which New Technologies Go Mainstream

Visual Capitalist October 14, 2024
Pallavi Rao

Innovation cycles tend to build upon each other, reducing the time taken between each milestone.

For example, the first wave of the Industrial Revolution took half a century, while later advancements like electrification occurred in just a few decades, and today’s digital innovations happen in just a few years.

As a result, the mainstream adoption of new technology has accelerated. We illustrate this phenomenon by comparing the invention year of disruptive technologies with the year they became widely adopted.

Data is sourced from the Bank of America’s “AI: From Evolution to Revolution” report, published in September 2024. Some invention dates vary from the original source after verification with other listed corroborating sources: The Guardian, TechTarget, and HowToGeek.

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