Great Graphic: Post-PC Era

This Great Graphic was from a post by Eric McWhinnie on Wall Street Cheat Sheet.  He got it from Statista.  It illustrates the new technology era that has begun--the post-PC era.  

Here is how it fits into the larger thesis I am working on--threads of which run through my longer term analysis over the past couple of years (overview here).  

Essentially, I have sketched out a periodization of the post-WWII era as different models of capital accumulation or cash registers.   Each model is associated with a different configuration of relationships and technology.

In terms of technology, the Bretton Woods era was about the penetration of white goods and other innovations the emerged from the war, into households. The defining technology of the Reagan-Thatcher era was the PC, the personal computer.  

The financial crisis marked the end of the Reagan-Thatcher model (cash register).  At first, many, including myself, thought that the model was simply going to be tweaked, like moving the antennas on that old black and white TV) as happened a few times during the Great Moderation, which was punctuated by infrequent and relatively short downturns at the end of the business cycle.  However, it quickly became clear that the Reagan-Thatcher era was over.  

The transition from Bretton Woods to Reagan-Thatcher took several years.  And who would have thunk that about a decade after the conservative Republican US President Nixon instituted price and wage controls that neo-liberalism would move back into ascendancy.  My hypothesis is that we are going through a similar transition now--the old order breaks down before the new one is clear.  

It is, at least, in part, a materialist interpretation insofar as each model is associated with a different technology.  The next era is not going to be based on the PC.  The post-PC era has begun.  There are far reaching implications from the mobility, customization, and privacy (and the lack thereof).  What is personal and what is private has to be re-thought.  In some ways, the post-PC technology is disruptive and in other ways it reinforces elements of the status quo, like some forms of inequality.