Even if you accept the premise that new jobs will be created by the new technologies, there are still risks.
1) The new more-demanding jobs will be beyond the intelligence and abilities of a larger and larger portion of the population. What happens when the computers and robots are smarter than the average bear/human?
2) Even if a person is capable of performing one of these more-demanding jobs, the new jobs will demand that they spend more and more years in training and learning. Without a significant increase in human life-span there will be a point of diminishing returns where a live person spends so much time learning and training that they don't nave enough time to actually work and earn money after that.
3) If the technologies keep accelerating, it's very likely that the machines will become flexible enough and smart enough that they can learn any task faster than a human. Even some "creative" tasks are really just applications of logic and reason (science). At that point the alternatives are between a) a massive redistribution of wealth so that all people share in the bounty created by the robots, b) we ban artificial intelligence or c) if there is any spark of human creativity that is beyond the capabilities of robots and computers, that will be the last refuge of human labor..

But even if we all become painters and singers and mimes, poverty will still be real: 90% of everything created by people is crap. So the creative society is still likely to require a massive redistribution of wealth.

I suppose another alternative is a massive depopulation of the human species on earth. That can easily be accomplished if the struggle for wealth distribution devolves into war.

Not to mention that the "Chinese supersonic sub" could bring about the downfall of the Virginia class and all the fancy big-data detection technology. Short of a super-sonic sub, the detection technologies aren't that far-fetched - detecting an exoplanet hundreds of light-years away has some of the same signal processing issues, and look at the improvements in that area.

True this. If you look at how ethernet works, there are 3 possible sources of digital "noise" that the cable contributes to.
a) dropped packets - if the cable is physically damaged or otherwise defective.
b) long latency times combined with out of order delivery of the packets. A very long cable would have to cause this, combined with poor buffering on the receiving device.
c) bitrot/data errors. - long cables and poor quality cables.

A $10k cable vs. a $10 cable won't do anything about any of these. Even if you pre-suppose that the $10 cable is worse than the $10k cable for each of these scenarios, the protocol mitigates for all three of these. If the bitrot is so bad that error correction isn't able to fix it, it's treated as a bad packet and falls into category a) and b) to re-transmit.

HV line are aluminum because the weight of copper would require more poles to support them. So aluminum is cheaper to build/maintain. Copper is more conductive than aluminum over a broad spectrum of frequencies, including 60 Hz.

The main thing NYC cares about is that the mayor gets the snow off the streets so things get back to normal ASAP. The main thing the 'burbs care about is not getting stuck driving/riding in a snow storm for several hours. Shutting down the city when there is a significant risk of a major snowstorm keeps both groups from being unhappy and keeps their chances of getting re-elected. This isn't about the nanny state, it's about the voting booth.

Ah. The Atlanta gambit. How cunning!

Not quite a prisoner's dilemma scenario, but similar. High reward, medium risk for shutting down. Low reward, high risk for not shutting down.

The whole controversy last year about Comcast offering public wi-fi using the routers they supply to their home customers suddenly makes a lot more sense. Normal wi-fi data usage from outside users in a residential area is not a widely used feature, but "cellular" wireless is much more common. I bet we'll see a similar service (similarly priced) from them shortly.

A harbinger in other ways, too. Much of the story centers on a group of technocrats and scientists struggling to keep society running in the face of the incompetence and stupidity in the general public. I'm sure a lot of climate scientists are feeling that vibe right now.

It's probably more than just a concept. They're marketing it like it will be out for holiday season 2015. It looks like they view this as the "killer app" for Windows 10. The closing of the ad shows both the Windows 10 and Microsoft logos in sequence.

I wonder how it'll play with an HP Sprout or a 3-D printer.

Better yet, tell everyone it's when the taser is fired, but activate it when the device is removed from holster/ pocket. It probably would only work once, but that once might be worth it.

Yeah Steam locos are really in the "rare, but not gone" category. Though I guess that applies to a lot of these sounds. Another rare, but not completely gone: the scrape of a phonograph needle across an LP.

Well, we still get coil whine on many GPU's, so it's still around. Just not as noticeable.

Yeah, it's not just the ringer, but the pulsing sound of the rotary dial itself that's gone. Touch tones even on the analog phones.

Most places have an off switch for the fountains. It costs an extra $million, but these people can afford it. /jk, but you know what I mean. Sometimes you want to look at the view, and other times LA is covered in smog and the fountains look nice.