personal-blog/content/post/the-limits-of-tech.md

title	date	tags	topics	draft
The Limits of Tech	2021-04-06T19:59:40+01:00	futurism trends	culture politics	true

When I was cutting my teeth as a new entry into the tech workforce in the late 1980's, computer technology was just entering its adolescence. Desktop computers were just beginning to become a household item, and many businesses were just beginning to see some serious fruits of long-term investments in enterprise scale infrastructure that they'd made over the previous ten or fifteen years. Cellphone technology was limited to hardware engineers and high value businesses, and the idea of a ubiquitous, always-on network which linked every computing device on the planet, was still mostly an aspirational piece of science fiction.

Futurists in the late eighties loved to ramble on about four day work weeks, paperless offices, online education, and computers in every home that would serve as portals to university-level knowledge, and electronic butlers. Much of this has eventually come true. Offices are largely paperless now. Computers are not only in every home, but in every pocket, briefcase, car, and almost every home appliance.