The major revolutions I have seen in my lifetime

The nature, size of impact, and time horizons on all these vary greatly, but here is my list:

1. Moon landing, 1969.  Most of the impact still not felt, except for satellites.  My parents did let me stay up late at night to watch it.

2. The collapse of communism (1989-????).  Poland is a lovely country to visit, Shanghai is amazing.  I flew to eastern Europe once I could in 1989.

3. The rise of Asia.  Japan and South Korea starting around the time of my birth.  The rise of China for sure, and currently the rise of India is a likely addition.

4. Feminization, ongoing, no firm date.  Impact plenty.

5. The realization of the internet.  Hard to date, but I’ll say the 1990s and ongoing.

6. The smartphone — 2007.  Impact in your face.  Bought an iPhone the first day, was mocked by MR readers as an “Apple fan boy.”

7. Effective Large Language Models/AI.  Impact still to be seen.

The “African population explosion” is perhaps next in line…