[HardDrive]

Originally posted by tchanson
From a Peter Egan column a few months back:

We once imagined, Lorenzo added, that the future would bring more speed in all things — cars, airplanes, communications, etc. — but speed is bringing us diminishing returns. "Now there is often a feeling," he said, "that we don't have to do it any faster." Magnusson nodded and said, "The Concorde is gone. We are entering an age of consideration after an age of speed."

Thompson agreed and added, "To live wirelessly is the new luxury; to give up your Blackberry. The new aristocracy won't have to be tied to computers, cellphones and electronic technology. E-tech will become the work of the drone, and to be enslaved by these devices will be the mark of the under classes. Great hotels, such as the Villa d'Este here, will be inhabited by people who don't have to be connected. They will be left alone."

I all but stood up and cheered. As the last journalist on earth without a cellphone, I'd been ridiculed by PR people everywhere for not being reachable every second of my life. Now it turned out I was a member of a new aristocracy, rather than just another Luddite idiot. Thompson was my kind of futurist.


Amen.


Tim

YES. Privacy, peace and quiet.....that will be the judge of who is truely rich in the future.