This is surely why teachers and educational institutions have always made up the largest single group of subscribers to The Futurist magazine, and why roughly one-third of the 150 or so presentations that I make each year as a futurist are for teachers, school administrators, curriculum planners and PSA's. Of course, we adopt new technology for the principal purpose of improving economic productivity and, ultimately, the general levels of prosperity in society. But the trends of the past quarter century do not reflect rising prosperity in America. To the contrary, average U.S. weekly wages fell 15 percent between 1970 and 1995, while the average work week has gotten longer. And, while most of those displaced workers found other employment, two-thirds ended up in jobs that paid lower wages and offered fewer benefits and less security.
Most economists say that the problem has been productivity improvement, or rather, the lack of it.
It takes decades just to develop and refine a new technology until it becomes a commonplace productive tool of daily work and social life. Often, a new technology's most potent applications require the creation of entire new infrastructures. So, technologic revolutions typically take about 75 years.