I've heard it said before that the Postmodern era began in 1990 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the invention of the World Wide Web.

I think you could definitely make the case that the invention of the Web/popularization of the PC and the opening of global markets in the early 1990s could be seen as the beginning of a second Renaissance, much the same way that the discovery of the New World and the invention of the printing press is seen as the beginning of the first Renaissance and the modern era.

Francis Fukuyama famously made the claim that history itself ended in 1989, but I would rather argue that an era of history ended - particularly what we call Modernity, lasted from about 1492 to 1989 give or take a few years depending on the social class and geographical location.

I imagine that future historians will study times before 1990 in a different fashion, and with less certainty than post-1990 times, because of direct documentation by ordinary people with social media, digital cameras, etc. Anything before the Internet Age will be comparatively mysterious to people in the future relative to times where the Internet was widely used. It will most likely be incredibly easy for people even in the far future to have an idea of what life was like in the 1990s onward (and especially from 2005-2010 onward) due to digital documentation by people from all walks of life, while sources for earlier times will be paltry in comparison and heavily biased due to the comparative rarity of being on camera and the lack of "spontaneous" social media posts.

I think the universality that capitalism has taken since the end of the Cold War and the digitally propagated Americanized pop monoculture that now characterizes human society renders us as living in a fundamentally different epoch than we lived in 30 years ago. In some ways the 1980s has more in common with the late 15th century than it does with today, in terms of how people accessed information, geographical mobility and the manner in which the history of those times was documented.

We're seeing massive changes in society, such as the slow end of nationalism and racism (and to some extent, even nations and races themselves as people intermarry, adopt elements of American culture and learn English), an extremely rapid decline of religious faith and power in favor of secular "creeds" such as humanism, meritocracy and social justice, a very gradual transition from a patriarchal to a matriarchal society (which admittedly is still far less than halfway through), a climate system that is becoming unrecognizable due to human industry, and a material culture that is dominated by international supply chains and is magnitudes more complex than anything witnessed in previous times.

Lastly, like during the Renaissance, art is taking on new meanings. You have elaborate and new forms of art that are often interactive like fanfiction, live action role playing games, 3D computer animation and cosplaying that are distinctly postmodern in character.

What do you think? Am I overestimating the changes of the past generation?