• When we invented machines to do our transport — transitioning from walking and horses and sailboats to engine-driven cars, boats, trains and planes — we extended our reach for delivering products, service and tourism to more distant locales

• When we invented machines to do simple calculations — transitioning from abacuses, finger counting, phone-based approvals, hand tools, pencil and paper, mechanical thermostats to calculators, money-counting machines, network-based transactions, CNC tools, smart thermostats — we extended our reach for automation at a distance.

• When we invented machines to do our creative processes — transitioning from writing essays and poems, painting, coding, designing on CAD to specifying production, code completion, generative designs — we leveraged our big data learning & extended logic chains.

If you look at the machines themselves, you see a pattern of replacement, but at the high level, it’s just extend (improve performance) and leverage (new applications). To extrapolate, look at the high level.

The next categories, I predict, are motion & sensing, which includes machines for: VR/AR, transport, communication, accessibility. (There’s more; let’s start with these)