Today, we can see on the horizon vast new means of communicating and computing, practical applications of advances in biotechnology, and doubtless many other innovations. But a half-century from now, the goods and services that we produce and consume will, to a significant extent, reflect applications of insights not yet formed or even imagined.
Could the residents of sophisticated eighteenth-century London, prior to Sir William Herschel's demonstration of invisible radiation, even contemplate the existence of radio waves that would reach around the world? I still have trouble grasping how the shortwave transmissions of the BBC travel thousands of miles to find their way to my bedroom at night to be picked up by my transistor shortwave radio.