Can I turn the question around and ask (rhetorically) what happened to make all those innovations happen in the first place? I think the answer is the WW2, and

Can I turn the question around and ask (rhetorically) what happened to make all those innovations happen in the first place? I think the answer is the WW2, and then the Cold War. Those have us miniaturisation, ICs, sensors, crypto (the old kind) and software tools and techniques to drive them and design their next generations. All the big money corporations making flavours of search and social networking are by products of that impetus.