What would be harder to do without in the future, the car, or the smart phone?

The car with all the roads and others to support motoring were a development of the last century. The smart phone (please include any means of being online) is this century development. I would argue, the smart phone brings more value to life and society than the car, while, the car (EV or gas) with supporting infrastructure puts orders of magnitudes more pressure on the worlds natural resources than do the smart phone.

What we see is, that technology increasingly makes it possible to target our needs much more directly and therefore also efficiently.

Last century technologies like; driving car to meet each other, heating full buildings just to keep our bodies warm, but also mass production of standardized consumer products that rarely were used to their full capacity. All those did very bad to address our actual needs. To compensate, we needed to “over-consume”.

Now, the most valuable sectors, like tech and medical, puts far less pressure on natural resources, when compared to the value they create and the needs they fulfil. New technology also begins to cut into the traditional sectors, like working online from home instead of driving to the office. But we have only seen the beginning

We still make use of last century technologies. Our society is configured around them, and they are hard wired into our daily life and routines – no matter how much one would want to do so, it is not possibly to live a climate neutral life today. But those last century technologies are inherently inefficient and are doomed to be replaced.

New technology is far more efficient to address our needs, and I am confident they will eventually out-compete the last century inefficient technologies. The world will ultimately be reconfigured around those technologies that most efficiently take care of our needs. Societies that do not reconfigure, will be replaced.

In the future, we can do without a car, but not without the smart phone.