"I'm expected to tell you all why this is the worst city in the world," Sam Kriss, a writer from London, began. He stood at a lectern in the middle of the dark room. The sold-out audience - an uneven mix of techno-optimists and -pessimists, faux centrists and progressives - listened between sips of champagne.
Take a moment to think about what the world must have looked like to J.P. Morgan a century ago, before his death in 1913. A shrewd investor in emerging technologies like railroads, automobiles, and electricity, he was also an early adopter, installing one of the first electric generators in his house. Today, we might call him a Techno-Optimist. He could scarcely imagine the dark days ahead: two world wars, the Great Depression, genocides, the rise of fascism and communism, and a decades-long Cold War.