“If the future is anything like the past, technology
will continue to solve problems that are not all that pressing, while doing
nothing to address the problems that really matter. Thus, while a 2-year-old
may never know what Roku boxes are, he will know what massive traffic jams are.
To date, technology has done nothing to improve the flow of traffic on I-95,
I-25 or the 405, much less the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Desktop PCs may go the
way of tape recorders and pocket calculators, but the Beltway will still be
backed up halfway to Baltimore.”— Humor columnist Joe Queenan, “Moving Targets:
There Are Some Things Technology Won’t Change,” The Wall Street Journal, May 25-26, 2019
Well, for a while, during the pandemic, it looked like
traffic jams were easing, including in the DC-Baltimore area that Queenan talks
about—and I suppose that tech-enabled remote work facilitated that.
But, according to this report from a year ago by an NBC affiliate, more people were on the road in that area than before
the pandemic, with return-to-office edicts rising. It just goes to show:
technology can’t really dislodge institutions and individuals from their stuck-on-stupid mode—even if stuck-on-stupid means being caught in massive
traffic jams.
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