A SOCIETY IN TRANSITION
Shifts in the structure of Ameri- can society, begun years or even de- cades earlier, had become apparent by the time the 1980s arrived . The composition of the population and the most important jobs and skills in American society had undergone major changes .
The dominance of service jobs in the economy became undeniable . By the mid-1980s, nearly three-fourths of all employees worked in the ser- vice sector, for instance, as retail clerks, office workers, teachers, phy- sicians, and government employees .
Service-sector activity benefited from the availability and increased use of the computer . The informa- tion age arrived, with hardware and
software that could aggregate previ- ously unimagined amounts of data about economic and social trends . The federal government had made significant investments in computer technology in the 1950s and 1960s for its military and space programs .
In 1976, two young California en- trepreneurs, working out of a garage, assembled the first widely marketed computer for home use, named it the Apple, and ignited a revolution . By the early 1980s, millions of mi- crocomputers had found their way into U .S . businesses and homes, and in 1982, Time magazine dubbed the computer its “Machine of the Year .”
Meanwhile, America’s “smoke- stack industries” were in decline . The U .S . automobile industry reeled under competition from highly ef-