"So long, stuff — the liberated commute: Over the years, I've gone from briefcase to backpack to burden-free."

Found this article by Alex Marshall very interesting, particularly this aside:

Through my writing about infrastructure, I know that personal and common cultural habits often lag behind technological advances by not years or even decades, but generations.

Men and women didn’t stop wearing formal hats regularly until the 1960s, even though the car began to make them outmoded in the 1920s. (There’s no place to put a hat in a car, and you usually can’t wear it because it hits the roof.)