It was back in late 1991 that the Soviet Union disintegrated and made clear the collapse of socialism. They marked the end of the Cold War, which had lasted for nearly half a century. Almost simultaneously came a rapid progress in information and communication technology (ICT). I have long maintained that what triggered the fall of socialism was ICT for the following reasons.
During the Cold War, Western and Eastern Europe was divided by an invisible wall called the Iron Curtain. While this wall was effective in preventing the flow of people and goods, it was incapable of blocking the flow of information via communications satellites. Visual information emanating from the West caught the eyes of those living in the eastern half of the divided continent, and drove home to them the way their west European counterparts were enjoying freedom and economic affluence. Thus, the true cause of the collapse of socialism lay in ICT innovations, which served to visualize the disparity between Western and Eastern Europe.
The Iron Curtain collapsed with the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. That triggered the worldwide movement toward globalization. The term "globalization" came into frequent use in the 1990s and rapidly became a keyword representing the state of world affairs toward the end of the century.