Beyond Telecommuting: 4 Sectors Tech Has Quietly Rebuilt in a Decade

Tech has made telecommuting a reality for an ever-growing share of the workforce. Globally, 70% of people work remotely at least once per week.

Telecommuting may be an obvious shift that tech has wrought on the world of work, but it's actually among the least consequential. Technology is making waves in places you'd never imagine: the way media is created and presented, how marketers reach their audiences, how doctors diagnose and treat illnesses.

Tech's influence on the modern economy can't be overstated. And some of the biggest shifts are happening in traditionally quiet sectors:

Not that long ago, brand marketing worked just as "Mad Men" portrayed it: Men in suits would make ad buys, cross their fingers for a month, and then check whether they saw a sales lift.

These days, nearly two-thirds of marketers use programmatic ads to aim their digital messaging at specific demographic segments. A decade ago, marketing was more art than science; these days, it's perhaps the most data-driven domain of business.

Also thanks to tech, user-level personalization has improved immensely. Even a few years ago, marketers were patting themselves on the back for customizing the recipient's name in an email campaign. These days, dynamic homepages display different things depending on who's viewing them.

It used to be that when you needed medication, you had to get a prescription from a doctor and physically drop it off at the pharmacy. Thanks to tech, that's no longer the case.

The anonymity that system affords has drastically broadened access to "embarrassing" pharmaceuticals, such as erectile dysfunction medication. Telemedicine has enabled companies like Nurx to connect patients with providers and help them access birth control and other prescriptions through online interactions.

As innovative as that is, it isn't even the tip of the iceberg. In some hospitals, an artificially intelligent robot nurse named Tug roams wards to deliver medications to rooms. Tools like Tug promise to make treating patients with infectious diseases easier and far less dangerous.

Ten years ago, technologies like 3D printing were barely about to produce plastic blocks. These days, 3D printers are able to reproduce bones and some internal organs, saving lives that would otherwise be lost while patients waited for donors.

But biotech has also changed the game in smaller daily ways. No longer do sunbathers have to worry about crossing the fine line between a dose of vitamin D and an aching sunburn. Skincare brands like L'Ori(C)al are now selling UV-sensitive skin patches that tell the user when he should step out of the sun.

In the near future, biotech may be able to reproduce entire limbs. Imagine a world where firefighters and police officers who lose a leg on the job are able to restore their bodies to their original condition.

This century, the traditional classroom model of education may go by the wayside. Already, massive open online coursework is giving students all over the country access to Harvard University professors for free. Students are learning to code at home and landing jobs as software engineers without any sort of formal education.

The opportunities for AI in education are huge. Imagine a world in which every student receives curriculum perfectly tailored to address her individual knowledge gaps. Think about the difference a robotic tutor might have made in some of your most challenging courses.

The way tech has changed the economy over the past 10 years has been nothing short of amazing. But technology is exponential: The shifts we could see in the next 10 might be multiple orders of magnitude more impressive. It's up to us to develop and use them wisely.

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