In order to understand the technological significance of an invention, it is sometimes better to go back into the past, rather than trying to project into the future. Science fiction is horrible at looking what will happen in the future, with our limited imagination and limited understanding of the present, we are just no good at seeing around the conceptual corners occurring along the path of a new technology. One thing that we are fairly good in seeing, however, is the past histories of well established technologies.
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