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“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” So said scientist and futurist Roy Amara in the 1960s—so famously that the statement above is now called Amara’s law. Variations of it have also been attributed to Arthur C. Clarke and Bill Gates. Antibiotic “wonder drugs,” computers generally, the internet, smartphones, nanotechnology, social media, AI, robotics, bitcoin—the social histories of all of these have been cited as examples of Amara’s law. Although it is primarily subjective and qualitative rather than objective and quantitative, the “law” has nonetheless grown