Okay, so that’s a lot of recognizable stuff. Notice, however, “hitting” at the same time spurred an Industrial the vast gaps of time in between each innovation—wherein Revolution, then what can 10 simultaneous new society has centuries, and sometimes millennia, to adjust technologies do? to the new stuff altering their existences. That’s basically the question society is about to Oh look, there’s the three-masted sailing ship. answer over the course of the next 10+ years. That’s pretty cool! Those people’s grandkids invented the next thing on that list: the printing Here we get at many economists’ arguments for press. As we know, it was a big deal. Martin Luther Trump-ism; the election was largely decided by a forever altered Europe in 1517 with a (printed) few Midwest “Rust Belt” states, places wherein list of theses questioning the church’s power. In the key issue was the economy. Trump’s promise the late 1700s, when the invention of the steam of an economic time machine—and his past- engine and the factory system collided, the tense sloganeering of “Great Again”—was actually change was so societally tumultuous that, among addressing the most pressing societal issue of myriad consequences, the Luddites protested the the day: jobs. His team just seems to lack the Industrial Revolution for years. understanding Obama’s had—that dependable jobs, real middle class jobs, protected by unions, tenure That’s why the “combinatorial” word is so potent and benefits—aren’t ever coming back again. in combinatorial innovation: if 1-2 technologies 73