It would be interesting to compare commercial to military / government revenues over time. I should study the topic further because it occurs at the intesection of several topics I'm interested in.

The early commercial viability of mainframes is a good point that I managed to forget. I'll still make my vague 20 year claim, though.

I agree that it all happened shockingly fast.

Most of what's happened has been faster and cheaper, but not so truly innovative.

I disagree. Reading IEEE mags since I became an EE major in college, there has been some stunning work over the years in the semiconductor physics realm that has been required to get the commercially viable transistor sizes we have today. From the computing point of view, though, I agree what you're saying.

you are the media you consume.