Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott and I share a few things in common. We both grew up in small American towns in the ’70s and ’80s—he in Virginia, me in Nebraska. We both now live and work in the Bay Area. We both make fairly frequent trips back to rural America to see family and friends.
And we’ve both watched as two extremely important trends have taken shape in the first part of the 21st century. The tech industry’s wealth, influence, and relevance to daily life have steadily increased, and will likely accelerate with the further application of automation, robotics, and AI. Big West Coast tech companies such as Facebook and Uber have celebrated IPOs on the floor of the NASDAQ, minting millionaires in the process.
Meanwhile, rural America struggled through a painfully slow recovery from the last recession, exacerbated by the continued exporting of jobs to cheap labor in China and Mexico, and by the destruction of jobs by automation. Largely ignored by the media, the symptoms of…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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