We're inching close to Asimov's Solaria[0] world, where private armies of robots do all the work, the scant humans never meet, preferring to use video calls that set up holographic environments which seamlessly blend the backgrounds of all participants into a cohesive virtual space.

0 :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_universe#Solaria

Yes, but he failed to predict the lameness that is MS Teams.

I think comparing us to Neanderthals didn't do it justice. Imo it's more like going from single cellular organelle-less life to a full blown human.

That said, today the "machine brains" we're building are closer to the single cell side of the scale than the human side.

I like this analogy better because cells never went away -- they just self organized into something greater than their whole, and I'd imagine the same will be (is?) True with 'thinking machines' as well

He didn't foresee the forced return to office, clearly :(

He was fairly prescient. I started working remotely in 1998, and haven't stopped since.

He must have read Forster's When The Machine Stops.

https://wiki.xxiivv.com/docs/machine_stops.txt

1878: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony