The technology that followed the invention of the transistor in 1947 and later the microchip — and the subsequent speeding up and shrinking of electronic processes — has had many unexpected spin-offs.
One that amuses me is the revival, as I see it, of letter writing. To those who thought the telephone had killed written communication, email, texting and a zillion forms of messaging must have come as quite a surprise.
Another unimagined consequence of transistorisation (a word, incidentally, that has not appeared once in the FT in recent decades) has interested me of late. It is the way businesses can become global brands with millions of customers while having next to no staff or overheads. Uber, as it is often pointed out, owns no cars, Airbnb, no rooms.