Whether something looks like a step function or not depends on the time scale at which it's observed. It seems to me that today there is a "new economy driven

Whether something looks like a step function or not depends on the time scale at which it's observed. It seems to me that today there is a "new economy driven by the Internet" and productivity has greatly increased in the last decade (which is probably one of the reasons for the current unemployment problems). I don't think we even understand the impact that having all of human knowledge just a Google query away has had on our activities. My bet is that 100 years from now no one will think of the 90's as a bubble. They'll think of it as the beginning of the Singularity.