Caroline Paulsen, Epilogue, Question 5

One of the passages that I found interesting in the Epilogue (starting with the question "Will we have strip malls in 2050?") discussed the possibility of a shift in values in the future. Charles Wheelan writes about how, at some point, society may begin to favor things of culture, community, or aesthetic beauty (such as small-scale, economically less viable farms in Italy) rather than simply amassing wealth in as efficient a way as possible. I found it interesting how, in some ways, by growing wealthier, humans can be drawn to sacrifice some of that wealth for things that are "inefficient" and could even be considered as anachronistic. Likewise, in the more developed parts of the world, tasks that used to be necessities (baking, gardening, etc.) seem to increasingly be becoming hobbies instead.