What happened here?

  • gandalf_der_12te
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    9 hours ago

    A lot happened around 1970, roughly at the same time (this is a list from my memory, so dates could be off by a year or two)

    • computers enter the market for the end consumer: the PC is born (1971)
    • the Internet really takes off (1972)
    • 1969 Hippie music festival
    • end of the gold standard (1971)
    • some oil crisis (1973 especially, which lead to a significant shift that Western countries approach economy on a global scale)

    The 1973 oil crisis is especially interesting. Before that, oil consumption grew exponentially. You can see it also very well in this picture:

    After the crisis, countries thought “ok, oil consumption cannot grow exponentially much further. We have to shift our economy away from increasing quantity, towards increasing quality” and that marked the shift from hard-economics (heavy industries) towards computer and software economics, which led to the IT industry between 1970 - today.


    Edit: oh and i forgot a couple of important things, but i’m not sure whether they’re causally connected:

    • vietnam war (around 1970)
    • women right’s movement / women employment started around 1970.