At the age of 45, I’ve lived through an era where technological advancement is proceeding at such a rapid pace that numerous technologies have appeared and then completely vanished from the landscape before successive generations could be born. The telephone in its original incarnation went largely unchanged for the better part of a century.  Today, increasingly advanced mobile phones have far more capability than computers and cameras that I was using just a decade ago.

Four years ago I wrote a post about my then 11 year old son and his first encounter with a rotary dial phone. Max has experienced film cameras and vinyl turntables, but he’s never seen an 8-track or a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk. In all likelihood, his children will never have seen a compact disk or DVD.  The DVD came to market two years after he was born and by today’s standards is old tech at more than a decade old but will likely be long gone in the next few years. During Max’s life span the Zip disk and other devices have come and gone while audio cassettes, VHS tapes and Polaroid instant cameras have mostly faded into history.

The video above shows a group of French 10 year olds contemplating devices that were contemporary just in my lifetime.

Last night Marty Linn, GM principal robotics engineer and Ron Diftler, NASA Johnson Space Center Robonaut project manager appeared on Dr Kiki’s Science Hour with R2. R2 is Robonaut  2, the dexterous  humanoid robot created by GM and NASA. Marty and Ron spent a full hour talking with Dr Kiki about R2 and showing off what R2 can do.

When I first got a cell phone back in the mid-1990s, I only used it sparingly because the price plans will enormously expensive and the batteries didn’t last very long. Over time, though using a wireless device for voice communications became dramatically cheaper as providers started to offer plans with hundreds or thousands of minutes per month at pretty reasonable rates. Of course the cell companies made up for these price reductions with volumes as all the kids started to get their own phones each with its own cost.

Eventually, the family share plan was born which helped a lot by providing a pool of minutes that were shared by up to five phones with extra lines only costing $10 a month. Of course this did little to stifle the ever growing phone bill as we soon added text messaging which of course the phone companies where happy to bundle into the plans for just a little more per month.

Now of course everyone is migrating to smart phones like the iPhone and the numerous Android devices available. Providers are requiring that every one of these phones have a data plan associated with it which currently cost $30 a month for 5GB of data.  The problem is none of us ever use anywhere close to the full 5 GB on our phones.

Over the summer, AT&T launched tiered data plans that will help a bit for some users and Verizon is expected to launch its own tiered setup later this month. Unfortunately the Verizon plans are expected to be the same $30 for 5 GB and a $15 plan that only gets you 150 MB. Checking our bill, we are averaging about 250-600 MB per month per phone so the overage charges on the $15 plan would make it more expensive than just staying with the existing $30 plan.

Since phone companies are forcing users to get a data plan when they get a smartphone, it’s time for them to provide a little more pricing flexibility too. The shared voice minutes work great so why not offer a shared data plan? If four phones are only using 2.5-3 GB of data, how about offering a 5 GB shared plan for a small premium over the individual price? Perhaps $30 for the first user and $5 for each additional user. That way a family of four would pay $45 instead of $120.

Just as family share plans brought in a large number of new subscribers, this kind of shared data plan could prompt more customers to switch up to smart phones.