If you look at the last 150 ...

If you look at the last 150 years, about every 30 years or so, a new scientific discipline emerges that starts spinning out technologies and capturing people's imaginations. Go back to 1900: That industry was chemistry. People had chemistry sets. In the 1930s, it was the rise of physics and physicists. They build on each other. Chemists laid the experimental understanding for the physicists to build their theories. It was three physicists who invented the transistor in 1947. That started the information revolution. Today, kids get computers.
 Paul Saffo

Quotes from the same author

Microsoft is a big intellectual roach motel. All the big minds go in, and they don't come out.
 Paul Saffo
The goal of forecasting is not to predict the future but to tell you what you need to know to take meaningful action in the present
 Paul Saffo