> In the 1970's, if you got gifted a camera, and were willing to put in the work to figure out how to use it, you learned a skill that immediately put you in rare company.
Everyone in the 1970s was gifted a camera. Many of them got a nice SLR with better lens than a modern smart phone. Cameras were expensive, but within reach of most people.
Film was a different story. Today you can get 35mm film rolls for about $8 (36 pictures), and $13 to develop (plus shipping!), and $10 for prints (in 1970 you needed prints for most purposes, thought slides were an option), so $31 - where I live McDonalds starts you are $16/hour, that roll of film costs almost 2 hours work - before taxes.
Which is to say you couldn't afford to become skilled in 1970 unless you were rich.
I think you really missed the point of what these technologies and innovations actually did for society and how it applies to today, underneath the snark.
In the 1970's, if you got gifted a camera, and were willing to put in the work to figure out how to use it, you learned a skill that immediately put you in rare company.
With enough practice of that skill you could be a professional photographer, which would be a good , reliable, well paid job. Now, the barrier of entry is nothing, so it's extremely competitive to be a professional photographer, and even the ones that succeed just scrape by. And you have to stand out on other things than the technical ability to operate a camera.
That's...what's about to happen (if it hasn't already) with software developers.