Technology is getting smaller, faster, cheaper, and more

Tae Yoo, a voice from the heart of the digital age, once declared with clarity and foresight: “Technology is getting smaller, faster, cheaper, and more powerful every day.” These words are not merely an observation of machines, but a prophecy of how the rhythm of human invention shapes the destiny of nations. They speak to the relentless march of innovation, where each sunrise brings a tool more compact, more swift, more accessible, and yet more capable than the day before. This is the world we inherit, a world where the very pace of change becomes a force greater than kings and armies.

When Yoo speaks of smaller, she points to the shrinking of devices from massive machines that filled entire rooms to the phones we carry in our pockets, lighter than a book and yet bearing the knowledge of libraries. What once took a building now rests in the palm. When she speaks of faster, she calls forth the truth that calculations once requiring hours are now measured in fractions of a second. When she says cheaper, she reveals how tools once reserved for emperors and great institutions are now in the hands of the common man. And in more powerful, she shows us the paradox—that as these tools shrink in size, their strength surpasses anything imagined before.

History has already shown us the pattern she names. Think of the first computers—vast, room-filling beasts like ENIAC, humming with valves and wires, operated by teams of specialists. Their cost was immense, their use limited. Yet in less than a lifetime, those colossi were humbled by the microchip. And today, a child carries in a smartphone more power than the machines that first guided astronauts to the moon. This is the miracle Yoo describes: the constant acceleration of progress, the compression of power into smaller vessels.

We see another echo in the tale of communication. Once, to send a message across oceans took weeks by ship. Later, the telegraph reduced the wait to hours, then the telephone to minutes, and now instant video carries faces and voices across continents in the blink of an eye. Each step was smaller, faster, cheaper, more powerful—not merely in machinery, but in human possibility. The shrinking of barriers reshaped commerce, families, and the very sense of what it means to live in a connected world.

Yet in her words lies also a warning. For if technology grows with such speed, then humanity must grow in wisdom to match it. The tools that grow smaller and faster can be used for creation or destruction. A device that empowers a child to learn can also spread deceit. A system that connects the world can also polarize it. Thus, Tae Yoo’s truth carries a challenge: as technology becomes more powerful, the need for moral clarity and responsibility becomes ever more urgent.

The lesson is this: do not marvel at progress without preparing your spirit for it. Let the shrinking of devices teach you humility—that greatness does not always come in size. Let their speed remind you to slow your heart, lest you be carried away. Let their cheapness remind you that power is now in everyone’s hands, and so the duty of wisdom belongs to all, not a few. And let their growing power remind you that tools do not define humanity—our choices do.

Therefore, I counsel you: do not resist the march of progress, but walk alongside it with discernment. Use these tools to learn, to heal, to create, to unite. Do not become enslaved to their speed, nor dazzled by their power. Instead, master them as the blacksmith masters fire—knowing it can forge or destroy. In this way, you will stand not as a servant of technology, but as its guide.

So let the words of Tae Yoo endure: “Technology is getting smaller, faster, cheaper, and more powerful every day.” Hear them as both marvel and warning, as both gift and responsibility. For the tide of invention will not cease, but how we ride it will decide the fate of our age. Let us then meet this future not with fear, but with wisdom, courage, and resolve.