One of my purest pleasures is hiking the hills above Los Angeles. On my typical route, I get 360 degree views encompassing downtown LA, the sweeping coastline, and the low slung mountains surrounding LA county.
Remarkably, this view doesn't look so different than it did 75 years ago — the mid-century when people imagined a space-aged future. There are no flying cars, no skyscrapers reaching into the atmosphere, and no Blade Runner-esque urban sprawl.
Yet, things have changed profoundly. Almost all of those changes are in the area of information technology. In bits, not atoms.
These changes have happened in three stages, and now we are in the fourth.
A brief history of information technology
About ten years ago, an xkcd comic came out: