What is the time taken for a technology to spend all its potential to change society?
Initially, the effect is small as the technology is not well understood, widely known and the number of units is low.
As the technology becomes more mainstream the pace of change quickens, until such a point that the majority of the potential uses of the technology have been saturated, after which its capacity for change diminishes.
The barriers to the effect that technology can have are: the number of units (cost of raw materials, economies of scale), infrastructure, eduction, etc
Examples that can be considered are the internal combustion engine, mobile phones and email.
The internal combustion engine is probably over the hill in its capacity to change, although there are some societies where cars are less prevalent and thus there is still a capacity for change.
Email is widely used and perhaps ove the top, but there are still many IT illiterate people in the world and many possible uses of email that haven't been explored.
Mobile phones have probably peaked; mobile internet still has lots to change to enact.
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