Did you ever play Leap-Frog as a kid? It’s my contention that technology leap-frogs every other decade.

Think about it. A hundred years ago people still found entertainment in books and magazines, such as the Saturday Evening Post. Illustrator Norman Rockwell would become a household name in the first half of the 20th Century. But it was cinema that became the cutting edge in entertainment. Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino and Lillian Gish were idolized by millions. Silent movies continued on through the twenties and, by the thirties, they had become talkies. But also in the thirties, radio suddenly went mainstream. America’s middle-class was entertained by big-bands, game shows, comedies and such adventures as Little Orphan Annie for the kids and The Shadow for adults.

Some believe television would have emerged in the forties but that World War II delayed it for nearly a decade. Perhaps, but it was during the 1950s that TV antennas grew like mushrooms across America. People read fewer books and magazine subscriptions declined. Even movies took a hit and tried such things as 3D and CinemaScope to bring back the crowds. All with limited success. It became the decade of I Love Lucy, Dragnet and Your Show of Shows on the little boob tube.

During the sixties, radio split into AM and FM, TV began broadcasting in color and the movies continued experimenting. Each offered innovations but there were no radical inventions to emerge in the ’60s.

Remember Pong? By the late-seventies, computers and computer games began to emerge. During the ’80s desktop computers continued their ascent, finding their way out of the office and into homes. The ’90s brought the internet and, over the next decade as more homes used broadband, people were finding new forms of entertainment online. The world became digital and interactive. Everything that came before: movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, computer games—all could be had through the internet. Not to mention cat videos on YouTube. And the technology allowed anyone to produce their movie, publish their book, share their music and express their artistic visions with the world. The arts became cheaper to produce and easier to share.

So we had cinema during the 19-teens, radio during the ’30s, TV during the ’50s, computers (and computer games) by the late ’70s and early ’80s. And, finally, the internet in the ’90s. Each seems to have leap-frogged a decade during the last century. And, if this pattern holds true, brace yourself, something new should be appearing on the horizon about now which will become the next big thing. Could it have something to do with smart phones or something else entirely?

This week’s illustration, by the way, is an early work, created back when I used an airbrush. This was painted using colored inks and gouache.