Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything

by Kelly Weinersmith

New technology is not simply the slow accumulation of better and better things. The big discontinuous leaps, like the laser and the computer, often depend on unrelated developments in different fields.

One time, we took a single species called Brassica oleracea and turned it into every vegetable you hated as a kid—brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, collard greens. YES. All one species, slowly modified over generations into a thousand okay-tasting forms, each more cheese-requiring than the last.

technological change is as much about market reality as scientific cleverness.

One important thing that should always be considered when thinking about markets is whether a new system, however ugly, is better or worse than the current system.