On Sunday, 22 January 1984, the Los Angeles Raiders defeated the Washington (then) Redskins 38-9 in Super Bowl XVIII. With the exception of a few aging Raiders’ fans, what we all remember better from that evening 40 years ago was one advertisement that set the tone for a techno-optimism that would dominate the 21st century.

The ad showed an auditorium full of zombie-like figures watching a projection of an elderly leader who resembled the Emperor from 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back. A young, athletic woman in red and white (the colors of the flag of Poland, which had been engaging in a massive labor uprising against the Soviet-controlled communist state) twirls a hammer and throws it through the screen framing the leader’s face, just as armored police rush in to try to stop her.

The ad explicitly invoked George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan, then president, was launching a re-election campaign based on his boldness in facing down the totalitarian Soviet threat while amplifying the risk of global nuclear annihilation.

That month, Apple began selling a personal computer that would change how we think about computing technologies in our lives and would channel many of the ideological changes that set the 21st century in motion. In many ways, the long 21st century began this week 40 years ago.

In addition to rising in fits and starts from a garage-based startup in Cupertino, California, to what is now the most valuable company in the history........

© The Guardian