That's how human progress works. No one can want or need it because they cannot conceptualize wanting it until someone shows that it is possible. Now, many of those wants become needs.

We can absolutely conceptualize what we want or need. I was born in 1980 in NYC. When I was a boy my father took me to a tech conference where they had a demo of ordering TV shows on demand. It was a miracle, to my young mind. Was this what I needed?

Growing up I had a friend group of misfit boys, who discovered h4ck1ng and phr34king. But we also discovered slackware Linux on 3.5" floppies. We also had to discover ASM and compiling the linux kernel in order to do anything with it. Boys with machines. That wasn't what I needed either.

Later on we did have great things with tech. Google made the world searchable in ways Altavista didn't. I remember strapping the original iPod on my arm to go for runs outside. I didn't even need a car for a while investors subsidized my Uber rides to and from the office.

Now, it seems the US is balanced on a precipice. The economy seems to have an incredible amount of money desperate to grow, but to what purpose. In my lifetime, and in my parents, and their parents before them, when the dollar becomes restless the flag goes forth. The dollar follows the flag.

And here we are at war.