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It's hard to overstate the effects of the personal automobile and the post-War population boom on our physical and social landscape.
There were about 140 million Americans in 1945; there are now well more than twice that many of us.
A typical person doesn't buy an overflowing shopping cart full of groceries without an automobile with which to transport it home.
Digital technologies may well affect our patterns of living and working in ways every bit as profound as the effects of the automobile. Some of those effects are easily foreseeable, and some will likely catch us off guard. I can see how new communications technologies might breathe new life into smaller and more remote locales. Such technologies have already fueled a resurgence in "artisanal" (don't shoot me Lizzie, I'm just the messenger) enterprises. Makers of, say, custom front-quarter horsehide jackets or beaver-felt fedoras couldn't survive without a strong online presence. And such is becoming more and more the reality with mass-market bricks-and-mortar retailers.
There were about 140 million Americans in 1945; there are now well more than twice that many of us.
A typical person doesn't buy an overflowing shopping cart full of groceries without an automobile with which to transport it home.
Digital technologies may well affect our patterns of living and working in ways every bit as profound as the effects of the automobile. Some of those effects are easily foreseeable, and some will likely catch us off guard. I can see how new communications technologies might breathe new life into smaller and more remote locales. Such technologies have already fueled a resurgence in "artisanal" (don't shoot me Lizzie, I'm just the messenger) enterprises. Makers of, say, custom front-quarter horsehide jackets or beaver-felt fedoras couldn't survive without a strong online presence. And such is becoming more and more the reality with mass-market bricks-and-mortar retailers.