Data’s 1971 Moment In 1971, knowing how to assemble a magazine spread with an X-Acto knife was a career-defining skill. Art directors spent years mastering the geometry, the wax, the precise cuts. Then desktop publishing arrived. By 1985, Aldus PageMaker shipped on a floppy disk for the Mac , and the decades-old craft became an artifact. Five years ago, assembling a production-ready UI in a week was considered efficient. Today, your PM can generate something functional in an afternoon with AI-driven design tools. Same polish? Not always. But good enough to test with users and out-iterate competitors. Every technical revolution sorts people into two camps: those who recognize the shift and move forward, and those who defend the old gates. Right now, data infrastructure is having its 1971 moment. Most people just haven’t noticed. The Pattern: Everything Shifts Left Software development is a story of capabilities being pulled leftward in the lifecycle.…