In 1987, economist and Nobel laureate Robert Solow made a stark observation about the stalling evolution of the Information Age: Following the advent of transistors, microprocessors, integrated circuits, and memory chips of the 1960s, economists and companies expected these new technologies to disrupt workplaces and result in a surge of productivity. Instead, productivity growth slowed, dropping from 2.9% from 1948 to 1973, to 1.1% after 1973.
These machines don’t think, though. They are the same glorified calculators we’ve been using, just with slightly updated formula sets. What we should be focusing on is the advent of quantum computing, which will supercharge everything we’re currently dealing with. That will be our generation’s Y2K. I read recently that quantum will become cheap enough to start disrupting things as early as 2029, which is not very far away.