This would have been really smart last year, and even smarter 10 years ago

The key thing that happened, was that the cost of transmission was passed to the sender, instead of the recipient: May 1, 1840, the introduction of the postage stamp. Within 2 years, the volume of UK mail more than doubled, not all that impressive on the modern scaling front I suppose, except that this was all hardcopy, which makes it a scaling achievement never ever duplicated since. Especially when you realize it was all real dudes in uniforms emptying postboxes and putting things on steam powered trains.

Mmm, SteamPunk, gotta love it, the original steampunks were, indeed, the actual Victorian SteamPunks. In many respects, particularly technological, we are still very Victorian indeed, and have a considerable challenge in front of us, to out-do their scaling.

But really, we are really weak on paradigm shifts these days, much as we worship them, compared to say a hundred and fifty years ago, when they didn't even know what they were.