With 2017 in the rearview mirror, let’s look at some highlights from the past year’s editorials that point to where our industry may be headed in the future.

“Most of us have the natural tendency to discount the long-term impacts when faced with this kind of potential for massive disruption and dislocation. What we tend to miss is not only what is already possible, but also how quickly these developments have occurred, not to mention the pace of acceleration that’s beginning to unfold. Relying on straight-line thinking is not helpful. The J-curve for automation and machine intelligence has hit an inflection point, and progress — which for decades inched upward on a relatively gentle slope — is now shooting almost straight up. … One implication is the collapse of distance and the end of the most recent wave of globalization. When labor costs effectively drop to zero, then the search for the cheapest-available labor pools around the globe becomes meaningless