"In 1971, Intel poured gasoline on that fire by releasing the 4004, a microchip generally recognized as the first general-purpose microprocessor. Popular innovations rapidly followed: the computerized cash register, the personal computer, credit cards, cellular phones, text messaging, the Internet, the web, online games, mass surveillance, app stores, social media. These innovations have arrived faster than previous generations, but also, they have crossed a crucial threshold: that of the human lifespan."
"While the entire second millennium A.D. has been characterized by a gradually accelerating rate of technological and social change - the printing press and the industrial revolution were no slouches, in terms of changing society, and those predate the 20th century - most of those changes had the benefit of unfolding throughout the course of a generation or so. Which means that any individual person in any given century up to the 20th might remember one major world-altering social shift within their lifetime,"
Rapid technological acceleration in the 20th and early 21st centuries created increasingly shorter cultural cycles and successive transformative inventions. Early 20th-century electrification, radio, motion pictures, and television disrupted daily life. The 1971 release of Intel's 4004 microprocessor triggered a cascade of popular innovations: computerized cash registers, personal computers, credit cards, cellular phones, texting, the Internet, the web, online games, mass surveillance, app stores, and social media. These innovations now arrive within individual lifespans, crossing a crucial threshold. Earlier centuries saw major changes unfold over a generation, so individuals then typically experienced only one world-altering shift in a lifetime; now multiple such shifts occur within one life.
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