Technology moves fast. So fast, in fact, that it's easy to take it for granted. Smartphones, which have been around for a decade or more, are so ubiquitous and such an integral part of our daily lives that it's easy to forget just how advanced they really are. New products, like wearables, are almost always billed as something bigger and better than their reality.

Things like streaming services, social networks, smartphones, tablets, and voice control are all commonplace now, and not even particularly interesting at this point. But look back as little as five or 10 years, before most of these things existed, and you can see how technology has dramatically transformed the way we go about our daily lives.

In my role as an evaluator of new technologies and products, I think about this a lot. It's easy to get bored with smartphones — trust me, as I look at my desk right now, there are half a dozen phones on with with negligible differences between them.