Breaking The Law

Some of us in the field of serving individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities are breaking the law. Moore’s law, to be exact.

Moore's law is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who described the trend in 1965. His prediction has proven to be accurate, and describes the driving force of technological and social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In short, technology keeps advancing at a faster and faster pace.

But it isn’t just technology that is advancing. The pace of technology adoption is also speeding up, at least according to the Harvard Business Review. The article linked above demonstrates that Americans are embracing new technology at an ever increasing pace. For example, it took decades for the telephone to reach 50% of households, beginning before 1900. It took five years or less for cell phones to accomplish the same penetration in 1990. The chart below shows other examples.

Source.

Sadly, those of us in the field of serving people with intellectual and cognitive disabilities don’t seem to be interested in following Moore’s law. We aren’t keeping up with the pace of innovation or technology adoption that is happening all around us. Providers in our field simply aren’t adopting these tools fast enough, and we aren’t keeping up with the latest possibilities that the advance of technology are bringing. I see it all the time, whether it is social media or remote monitoring or any number of other technologies, providers are dragging their feet when it comes to embracing what the 21st Century has to offer. The real impact (or lack thereof) is on those who use our services.

I think we are past the time when we can plead poverty or complain that “the states won’t pay for it.” We can no longer afford to sit back as the world changes around us. Between the silver tsunami and looming shortage of an available work force, we need to understand these tools and start adopting them at the same pace as the rest of the educated world. We’ve been breaking the (Moore’s) law for too long.

Then again, what do I know?