To imagine the future of work, you have to also imagine how people get to work. If we had believed the prognostications of Elon Musk and others, by 2018 we would be calmly commuting in driverless cars, reading or sleeping in the back seat as robotic chauffeurs smoothly whisked us along highways and city streets. That rapid change did not happen, which is probably a good thing — for had we experienced that sudden disruption of automation, millions of taxi drivers, delivery drivers, truck drivers, and bus drivers might have been thrown out of work.

READ MORE:Will Autonomous Vehicles Bring a Jobless Future