The radio telephone system and satellite-based navigation brings us back to the Middle Ages, as the monks take the lead in healing European civilization after the collapse of Rome. The introduction of an improved loom and the spinning wheel bring about the first economic boom in the West (and new ways to cash in)...but another climactic anomaly brought on disasterous famine--and the Black Death. Once the nightmare had ended, the survivors regrouped, and new industries emerged from the ashes of the old ones. A cheap new way to make paper led to the start of printing and mass-production of books--and the rise of higher learning among the lay people for the first time.
The fall of the Byzantines and the exodus of hundreds of Greeks to Italy brought about a revival of interest in Ancient Greek knowledge and from that, the Italian Reanaissance. As living standards advanced, industries got more advanced and what we would call automation emerged--and jumped from making cloth to making ships. In the 19th Century, the mass exodus of European refugees to the United States brought about further refinements in automation and the handling of information, in the invention of the tabulator, one of the forerunners of the modern computer.