The Past Keeps in Touch with Our Present

How New Technologies Push Us Toward the Past   

William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone | May 8, 2015

Reading all the stories and hearing the rumors about Apple’s autonomous vehicles, Google’s drones, and Amazon’s experiments with new delivery systems, it’s easy to imagine looking out your window in a few short years and seeing a world that is positively Jetsons-like. Think through the implications of these technologies, however, and an even more startling vision emerges: the future will look more like the past.

Much has been written over the last decade about how the Internet, by enabling online commerce, social networks, and easy access to information and entertainment, has transformed the global economy. But we’re just beginning to see the dramatic changes this will in turn bring to the physical landscape. Ubiquitous connectivity will not only supercharge our way of life and our ways of working, it will in some sense reverse them.

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