Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/50

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Chapter III
The Man of Business

Whatever changes may take place in the organisation of society during the present century, we may regard it as certain that the folk who

"Rise up to buy and sell again"

will be always with us. The man of business will possess many conveniences denied to the city man of to-day. It is, for instance, to be supposed that the inordinate defects of even the best telephone systems will be eliminated. When wireless communication of ideas has been perfected, of course the telephone exchange will disappear. Differential "tuning"—the process by which any wireless telephone will be able to be brought, as transmitter, into correspondence with any other wireless telephone, as receiver—will enable every merchant to "call up" every other merchant. Instead of, as at present, looking up his associate's number in the directory, and getting connected by the clumsy junction of wires at an exchange office, the merchant will look up the tuning-

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