Look around you. If you’re at work, you’re likely surrounded by wires: a computer, a telephone with five lines, a fax machine buzzing at the other end of the room. At home, the situation probably isn’t all that different: a phone constantly ringing off the hook – perhaps your teenager’s private line. Another child ties up your other phone line by surfing the Internet. Even outdoors, in what was long ago Canadian wilderness but is now an urban plain, the sounds of nature have been replaced by the sounds of beeping pagers and cell phones.
And to think, ten years ago, hardly any of this existed.
The technology revolution of the 1990s has spurred North America into unprecedented levels of economic growth. Unfortunately, in many cases, the platform from which the continent has jumped is a relic of the post-war boom. This is hardly surprising, given that no one could not have predicted the advances that would be made in the second half of the twentieth century, especially in the cities where North America’s population has increasingly drifted.