In the 50s, Abstract Expressionism was one of the main assets of the CIA in the propaganda war of the United States against the Soviet Union. This was so, because, as an artistic movement, Abstract Expressionism was being held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US, against which the Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete. As effective as it may have been, Abstract Expressionism started giving way to the emerging Pop Art culture, which used the iconography of television, photography, comics, cinema and advertising as the main subject of the arts in order to celebrate post-war consumerism. Pop Art, in turn, while defying the psychology of Abstract Expressionism, happened to worship the same god of materialism that the sponsors of Abstract Expressionism had set up to promote. 

In the 21st century historians have increasingly portrayed the 1970s as a "pivot of change" in world history focusing especially on the economic upheavals.

1980's saw great social, economic, and general change as wealth and production migrated to newly industrializing economies. 

Culturally, the 1990s was characterized by the rise of multiculturalism and alternative media, which continued into the 2000s. Movements such as grunge, the rave scene and hip hop spread around the world to young people during the decade, aided by then-new technology such as cable television and the World Wide Web.

The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States in New York City, New York, and Arlington County, Virginia, on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001.