From Hybrid Librarian is this video that details ten emerging technologies that aren't long from becoming realities in some form. How do you think things would change with these technological advances in place? There always seem to be drawbacks as well as positive outcomes. Via Science Dump.
I, personally, do think of the iPhone as a game-changer. Different or similar tech may have been there before, but it was all crammed into a single tiny PC-in-a-pocket and accepted by the masses. Or, at least it felt like a twenty-first century tool.
Electricity and the telephone are two obvious examples.
In 2000, the Internet was quite different than it is now, but it was not considered a vehicle for social change in those early days. Smartphones existed prior to 2007; they were called something else (PDAs with Internet and phone, such as the Palm), but it took force once someone was able to combine already existing technologies into a unified platform.
Those technologies hyped as the great solution to everything ultimately failed, or simply never reached fruition. Atomic energy. Heck, anyone remember the Segway?
Not to be a Negative Nelly, but I've learned to take these kind of pronouncements with a grain of salt.