We've talked up 3D printing, which is a tool for manufacturing at a distance. We've talked up robotics, which is a tool for getting the burgers flipped without exposing arts graduates to the risk of turning up for work. We've all got madly excited about AI, which is a method of winning chess games without hiring grand-masters.
So much of today's technology is designed to do things we already do, but without the people. It's perfect for a pandemic. The UK has a prediminantly service-based economy as well, and if that doesn't mean we can inter-act productively via screens, at a distance from each other, well, I don't know what it does mean.
And where's the organised use of the internet for education? If Kier Starmer can stand at a podium and give a party-conference speech to an empty corridor, surely teachers and lecturers can do what internet-marketing gurus do, and record ten-part downloadable modules for their students?
Do we really need the children in classrooms, however distanced? Students in halls of residence? Really?
We can make an economy happen, but as the small print says, past performance is no guide to the future.