Today, on the day of the funeral of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, we celebrate the life of the United Kingdom’s longest-reigning monarch, with a short post reflecting on the change in technological advancement over the course of her 70-year reign.
In her first televised Christmas broadcast in 1957, the Queen spoke of the “speed at which things change around us”. Just one year later, in 1958, the Queen made the first ever trunk call in the United Kingdom, to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, more than 300 miles away.
An incredible fifty-six year’s later, in 2014, the Queen sent her first tweet to mark the opening of a new Science Museum gallery, which read: “It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R.”
At the age of 94, in another royal first, the Queen took part in her first ever official video conference call as part of her public duties. In it, the Queen, alongside her daughter, Princess Anne, spoke to a group of carers about how they had been affected by coronavirus and the lockdown. “Interesting listening to all your tales and stories,” the Queen told the group. “I’m very impressed by what you have achieved already. I’m very glad to have been able to join you today.”
While the Queen continued to stick to traditional methods of communication, such as letters and telegrams, over the course of her life, her own website, which began as www.royal.gov.uk, was set up in 1997 during a visit to Kingsbury High School in Brent, north west London.
Fast-forward from 1957 and, sixty-five years later, and Her Majesty’s words, “speed at which things change around us”, have never been more true. We live in a an age of technological acceleration that is, at times, hard to comprehend. But like the adoption of the telephone, and television before it, the story of the Metaverse will pass into history like all technological advancements before it.
themetabite.com will be here to record that story.
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