Kate Johnson

The Olympics has always served as a touchpoint for me to reflect on just how quickly our world changes.

Think about it.

Every four years, the Summer Olympics shine a massive spotlight on how much our technology evolves between the games.

So I want you to take a minute and picture yourself in the year 2004.

Try to remember the world back then.

We didn't have iPhones.

The Facebook, as it was originally known, was just emerging on college campuses, and YouTube, it wasn't a thing.

I competed at the Athens 2004 Olympics in women's rowing, which may as well have been the ancient Olympics as far as technology goes.

I was still using a flip phone, and I sent my friends and family email updates from the games using my Hotmail account and dial-up internet.

So now I want you to imagine what it was like to win the first US Olympic medal in the event in 20 years.

And rather than getting to instantly share that news with the world via my Instagram or TikTok account, my teammates and I had to wait to see if the Olympic broadcasters and journalists would cover it.

Our story was entirely in their hands to tell or not.

Well, 20 years later, and all of this has changed.

In an instant, we have sports scores, match results, and news stories at our fingertips and on our phones the moment it happens.

And this is incredible.

But there's still a problem.

It's one thing to seek out the information you're looking for.

It's another thing entirely to stumble upon it.

The stumbling upon it goes like this.

You're scrolling through your social media feed, you see something that captures your attention, you click on it and poof, down the rabbit hole you go, you're locked in.