I found this in an article from today's Times Circuits section [already, an admission I never thought I'd make], in which "eleven prominent men and women, few of them technologists, suggested a technology or gadget they would like to see invented."
John Perry Barlow makes a great observation:
I look at 19th-century novels and it seems people were in better touch then than they are now. It seems as if every time someone in Dickens wants to reach someone, they are able to right away. Of course, they had 15-year-old boys they could dispatch to go find someone.
Imagine! And, they could keep my tambourine attendant company.
