Somebody once said that a good science-fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.

We often assume that the world of today would stun a visitor from fifty years ago. In truth, for every miraculous iPad there are countless partly broken realities: WiFi passwords, connectivity, battery life, privacy and compatibility amongst others. The real skill of creating a compelling and engaging view of the future lies not in designing the... See more

every technology carries utterly unpredictable consequences. Nobody dreamed that the automobile would create a sexual revolution because it’s a rolling bedroom. Nobody dreamed that the automobile would destroy the extended family, that people would move hundreds and hundreds of miles from [each other]. The automobile created the suburb. McLuhan, on... See more

A technology is introduced — say, the car — and an existing sector is made irrelevant overnight (e.g., horse and carriage). In the short term, we’re fixated on how many horses will be out of a job. Harder to imagine, however, is how many jobs the car will create — as well as the different kinds of jobs it will create. It’s hard to envision radios,... See more