It was also a byproduct of World War II, having been funded by the U.S. Army to compute ballistics trajectories for field artillery. Instead, it was beginning an 18-month celebration of its creation and the changes it has brought to the world. If you do nothing else, you should at least adorn your snail mail with the Computer Technology postage stamp that the U.S. Postal Service unveiled on Feb. 14, 1996. As part of the birthday celebration, the ACM Chess Challenge paired IBM's Deep Blue with the World Chess Champion in a six-game match played under tournament conditions. Much that has been written about the match is utter nonsense.
German philosophers call such large events world-historical.
This was larger. It was species-defining. I don't think so. The history of mankind is the story of the development of tools of increasing complexity and utility. A computer is a tool.