> 300 years The people who lived through it later recounted that the arrival of railroads (1830-1850) brought the strongest and fastest changes in lifestyle an

> 300 years The people who lived through it later recounted that the arrival of railroads (1830-1850) brought the strongest and fastest changes in lifestyle and culture. The telegraph came along about the same time, so maybe that was just the shock wave of the tech onslaught. The ultimate dominance of tech should have been obvious when Abraham Lincoln started spending lots of time at the telegraph office to manage the war. But it has taken a long time to rout the resistance -- although I am now a dinosaur for not carrying a phone, in 1940, the top officers of the French military did not have phones on their desks. Nowadays, being within sight of one's phone produces enough distraction to amount to a small cognitive impairment. Nonetheless, the machines will win. Read Vonnegut's _Player_Piano_.