I think of it like this: in, say, the 1990s, "computers" / "tech" was fundamentally about doing _real-world_ things more efficiently. Word processing is a step

I think of it like this: in, say, the 1990s, "computers" / "tech" was fundamentally about doing _real-world_ things more efficiently. Word processing is a step up from a typewriter, desktop publishing is more efficient than typesetting, email is faster than fax or postal mail, spreadsheets allow for more efficient calculations and accounting, and obviously databases and industrial systems allow for efficient operations of businesses, warehouses, airlines, etc. A few decade later, all the obvious, real-world, low hanging fruit applications of technology were filled, and "tech" turned into the weird, more self-contained world of "the internet", social media, advertising, the attention economy, bitcoin, high frequency trading, AI, where it's really just your computer/algorithm fighting someone else's computer/algorithm, and rather detached from the offline world.