The lesson of history is that any technology that becomes widely deployed can only be displaced by a superior technology, but it never just goes away on its own. For example, wind and water mills were in use for centuries until steam mills came around. Steam power was used for ships and trains until internal combustion or electrical engines displaced them. Horse-drawn carts were used for more than two millennia before they were replaced by automobiles. This suggests that technological innovations based on digital technologies that have entered human society in the recent past will stay with us for quite some time.