Much like the tiniest of life forms if you study it very closely, technology shares many properties with living organisms.

It is perpetually turning over and evolving, thanks to the innovations by our inquisitive human race.

Even the very ideas that fuel such innovation share huge similarities with living organisms or viruses; they spread from brain to brain, change and evolve, getting increasingly rapid in completing each evolutionary 'step' as time progresses.

The rate of ‘evolution’ that we see in technology can be partly attributed to what is known as Moore’s Law.

This states that “circuit density or capacity of semiconductors doubles every eighteen months or quadruples every three years”. Gordon Moore noticed this law in 1975, and it is a constant that has remained accurate ever since and is accepted by many to be a major driver of innovation in the modern era.

In 2005, Ray Kurzweil, Director of engineering at Google and renowned author, inventor and computer scientist spoke of the acceleration of new technology and its adoption, and how this is essentially an evolutionary process:

“It took us half a century to adopt the telephone, the first virtual-reality technology.

Cell phones were adopted in about eight years. If you put different communication technologies on this logarithmic graph, television, radio, telephone were adopted in decades.

Recent technologies like the PC, the web, cell phones were under a decade. Now this is an interesting chart, and this really gets at the fundamental reason why both biology and technology are evolutionary processes – they accelerate.

They work through interaction - they create a capability, and then it uses that capability to bring on the next stage.”

This evolutionary process of technology and the acceleration of each step of the process itself presents great implications for many people in different walks of life around the world. In particular, it has very significant effects on industries and businesses within them that are disrupted by these innovations.

From my personal research, I have learned that even the most successful and established businesses can struggle with innovation.

Even the most stable of markets can be completely revolutionized forever, by a small nimble company who utilizes the latest technology for growth and success.

It would appear that a modern day David and Goliath story is applicable to many industries; where a small smart team of innovators can bring large corporations to their knees.

We have seen disruption across many major industries, especially those with technology at their core. This disruption can have both negative and positive outcomes, and perhaps many of the effects of this disruption are whose we will observe in coming years.

Seemingly miraculous breakthroughs in development have potential risks that could even outweigh any benefits, such as the potential for lethal weapons created using nanotechnology, for one more extreme example.

However, the tools provided by technology, if wielded correctly and not maliciously, can advance us as a race in ways many couldn’t have imagined.

Advances in healthcare such as prosthetics are giving hope to those who struggle with serious impairment on a daily basis.

Developments in manufacturing may displace many jobs, but also reduce the amount of people who put their health on the line every day, in dangerous jobs using heavy machinery where human error is still a significant risk.

Progress in renewable energy generation could spell the end for the use of fossil fuels which damage the environment.

The variety of web technologies and programming languages at the hands of inquisitive minds can enable people to do work they enjoy and become successful when they might not have been able to otherwise.

There are of course risks and issues that can appear out of these new innovations. There are limitations and barriers to overcome in some areas, particularly where the development of these technologies is difficult and expensive.

Some may take decades to truly benefit the population, if they do at all.

The technologies mentioned here may not even become available to the majority of the world's population for a long time to come.

Despite these drawbacks, through my research there have been some positive themes.

It does appear that the rate of innovation is indeed increasing, and it is taking less time for each cycle of adoption to complete.

If this continues, the developments noted in this piece could be commonplace to us in a decade or two.

Thanks to the incredibly bright minds that constantly push the boundaries of science, technology and all related fields, there is hope for the solution of many problems the human race faces today.

I do not believe that technology is the answer to all the world’s problems, but it is reassuring that it could be the solution to some of them.

There is a long road ahead before we see the positive and negative outcomes of all the innovations discussed, but it would appear in most cases that the positives are likely to outweigh the negatives.

Disruption by technology, in my opinion, is a force for good.

It helps to challenge our existing assumptions, it helps to reconstruct antiquated models for business which no longer serve the modern human.

It attempts to provide better solutions for those who are in need or want of them.

As long as humans work with technology, I believe disruption will only continue and increase in its frequency as technology evolves faster than even we do as a species.

There of course have been some less than ideal effects of disruption, often in the short-term, but in the long-term I agree with the notion that these changes are necessary and beneficial.

In 1839, English author Edward Buldwer-Lytton said "The pen is mightier than the sword."

It seems today that maybe the silicon computer chip is mightier than the pen and sword combined.