content: We are actually in a period that isn't dissimilar from first half of the 1800's, when technology and communication radically changed the economy of that time.  Today, we still have many vestiges of the old Industrial Age hanging around, but we are decades into the Information Age now, and there isn't anything that is going to reverse this movement.  Much as the Industrial Revolution took many jobs away, the resultant Industrial Age also created many more and eventually supported the growth of the Middle Class in the US.