In the early 1970s there were about half a million computers. Back in 1983, only 562 computers total were connected to the primordial internet. Now the number of computers, smartphones, and connected devices is estimated at 14 billion. It took smartphones a few years to go from niche product to utterly essential item for two-thirds of the planet. With this wave came email, social media, online videos—each a fundamentally new experience enabled by the transistor and another general-purpose technology, the internet. This is what pure, uncontained technological proliferation looks like. It
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From Niche to Nervous System: Computing’s Total Envelopment
