The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, Silicon Age, or New Media Age) is a
historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
, to an economy centered on
information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of Data (computing), data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information te ...
.
The onset of the Information Age has been linked to the development of the
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
in 1947,
the
optical amplifier in 1957, and
Unix time
Current Unix time ()
Unix time is a date and time representation widely used in computing. It measures time by the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970, the beginning of the Unix epoch, less adjustments m ...
, which began on January 1, 1970 and serves as the basis for
Coordinated Universal Time and the
Network Time Protocol. These technological advances have had a significant impact on the way information is processed and transmitted.
According to the
United Nations Public Administration Network, the Information Age was formed by capitalizing on
computer microminiaturization advances, which led to
modernized information systems and internet communications as the driving force of
social evolution.
Overview of early developments
Library expansion and Moore's law
Library expansion was calculated in 1945 by
Fremont Rider to double in capacity every 16 years where sufficient space made available.
He advocated replacing bulky, decaying printed works with
miniaturized
Miniaturization ( Br.Eng.: ''Miniaturisation'') is the trend to manufacture ever smaller mechanical, optical and electronic products and devices. Examples include miniaturization of mobile phones, computers and vehicle engine downsizing. In ele ...
microform analog photographs, which could be duplicated on-demand for library patrons and other institutions.
Rider did not foresee, however, the
digital technology Digital technology may refer to:
* Application of digital electronics
* Any significant piece of knowledge from information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange a ...
that would follow decades later to replace
analog
Analog or analogue may refer to:
Computing and electronics
* Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable
** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals
*** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...
microform with
digital imaging
Digital imaging or digital image acquisition is the creation of a digital representation of the visual characteristics of an object, such as a physical scene or the interior structure of an object. The term is often assumed to imply or include t ...
,
storage, and
transmission media
A transmission medium is a system or substance that can mediate the propagation of signals for the purposes of telecommunication. Signals are typically imposed on a wave of some kind suitable for the chosen medium. For example, data can modulate ...
, whereby vast increases in the rapidity of information growth would be made possible through
automated
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...
, potentially-
lossless
Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistic ...
digital technologies. Accordingly, ''
Moore's law'', formulated around 1965, would calculate that the
number of transistors in a dense
integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.
By the early 1980s, along with improvements in
computing power
In computing, computer performance is the amount of useful work accomplished by a computer system. Outside of specific contexts, computer performance is estimated in terms of accuracy, efficiency and speed of executing computer program instructio ...
, the proliferation of the smaller and less expensive
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
s allowed for immediate
access to information and the ability to
share and
store it. Connectivity between computers within organizations enabled access to greater amounts of information.
Information storage and Kryder's law
The world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally
compressed)
exabyte
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...
s (EB) in 1986 to 15.8 EB in 1993; over 54.5 EB in 2000; and to 295 (optimally compressed) EB in 2007. This is the informational equivalent to less than one 730-
megabyte (MB)
CD-ROM per person in 1986 (539 MB per person); roughly four CD-ROM per person in 1993; twelve CD-ROM per person in the year 2000; and almost sixty-one CD-ROM per person in 2007.
It is estimated that the world's capacity to store information has reached 5
zettabytes in 2014,
the informational equivalent of 4,500 stacks of printed books from the
earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
to the
sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
.
The amount of
digital data stored appears to be growing approximately
exponentially
Exponential may refer to any of several mathematical topics related to exponentiation, including:
*Exponential function, also:
**Matrix exponential, the matrix analogue to the above
*Exponential decay, decrease at a rate proportional to value
*Expo ...
, reminiscent of
Moore's law. As such,
''Kryder's law'' prescribes that the amount of storage space available appears to be growing approximately exponentially.
[ Roser, Max, and Hannah Ritchie. 2013.]
Technological Progress
." ''Our World in Data
Our World in Data (OWID) is a scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality.
It is a project of the Global Change Data Lab, a re ...
.'' Retrieved on 9 June 2020.
Information transmission
The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way
broadcast networks was 432
exabyte
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...
s of (optimally
compressed) information in 1986; 715 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1993; 1.2 (optimally compressed)
zettabytes in 2000; and 1.9 zettabytes in 2007, the information equivalent of 174
newspaper
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...
s per person per day.
The world's effective capacity to
exchange information through
two-way telecommunication networks was 281
petabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986; 471 petabytes in 1993; 2.2 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2000; and 65 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007, the information equivalent of 6 newspapers per person per day.
In the 1990s, the spread of the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
caused a sudden leap in access to and ability to share information in businesses and homes globally. Technology was developing so quickly that a computer costing $3000 in 1997 would cost $2000 two years later and $1000 the following year.
Computation
The world's technological capacity to compute information with humanly guided general-purpose computers grew from 3.0 × 10
8 MIPS in 1986, to 4.4 × 10
9 MIPS in 1993; to 2.9 × 10
11 MIPS in 2000; to 6.4 × 10
12 MIPS in 2007.
An article featured in the
journal
A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to:
*Bullet journal, a method of personal organization
*Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period
*Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...
''
Trends in Ecology and Evolution'' in 2016 reported that:
Genetic information
Genetic code may also be considered part of the
information revolution
The term information revolution describes current economic, social and technological trends beyond the Industrial Revolution.
Many competing terms have been proposed that focus on different aspects of this societal development.
The British polymat ...
. Now that sequencing has been computerized,
genome can be rendered and manipulated as data. This started with
DNA sequencing, invented by Walter Gilbert and Allan Maxam in 1976-1977 and Frederick Sanger in 1977, grew steadily with the
Human Genome Project, initially conceived by Gilbert and finally, the practical applications of sequencing, such as
gene testing, after the discovery by
Myriad Genetics of the
BRCA1 breast cancer gene mutation. Sequence data in
Genbank
The GenBank sequence database is an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations. It is produced and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI; a part ...
has grown from the 606 genome sequences registered in December 1982 to the 231 million genomes in August 2021. An additional 13 trillion incomplete sequences are registered in the
Whole Genome Shotgun submission database as of August 2021. The information contained in these registered sequences has doubled every 18 months.
Different stage conceptualizations
During rare times in human history, there have been periods of innovation that have transformed human life. The
Neolithic Age, the Scientific Age and the
Industrial Age all, ultimately, induced discontinuous and irreversible changes in the economic, social and cultural elements of the daily life of most people. Traditionally, these epochs have taken place over hundreds, or in the case of the Neolithic Revolution, thousands of years, whereas the Information Age swept to all parts of the globe in just a few years. The reason for its rapid adoption is the rapidly advancing speed of information exchange.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago during the Neolithic period, humans began to domesticate animals, began to farm grains and to replace stone tools with ones made of metal. These innovations allowed nomadic hunter-gatherers to settle down. Villages formed along the
Yangtze River
The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest list of rivers of Asia, river in Asia, the list of rivers by length, third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in th ...
in
China in 6,500 B.C., the
Nile River region of
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
and in
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...
(
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
) in 6,000 B.C. Cities emerged between 6,000 B.C. and 3,500 B.C. The development of written communication (
cuneiform in
Sumeria
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...
and
hieroglyphs
A hieroglyph (Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatonis ...
in
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
in 3,500 B.C. and writing in Egypt in 2,560 B.C. and in
Minoa
Minoa was the name of several Bronze-Age port cities on the coasts of the Aegean islands Crete, Paros, Siphnos, Amorgos and Corfu in Greece, as well as the Italian island of Sicily.F. Schachermeyer (1964). ''Die Minoische Kultur des alten Kret ...
and China around 1,450 B.C.) enabled ideas to be preserved for extended periods to spread extensively. In all, Neolithic developments, augmented by writing as an information tool, laid the groundwork for the advent of civilization.
The Scientific Age began in the period between
Galileo's 1543 proof that the planets orbit the sun and
Newton's publication of the laws of motion and gravity in ''
Principia'' in 1697. This age of discovery continued through the 18th Century, accelerated by widespread use of the
moveable type printing press by
Johannes Gutenberg.
The Industrial Age began in
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...
in 1760 and continued into the mid-19th Century. It altered many aspects of life around the world. The invention of machines such as the mechanical textile weaver by Edmund Cartwrite, the rotating shaft
steam engine by
James Watt and the
cotton gin by
Eli Whitney, along with processes for mass manufacturing, came to serve the needs of a growing global population. The Industrial Age harnessed steam and waterpower to reduce the dependence on animal and human physical labor as the primary means of production. Thus, the core of the Industrial Revolution was the generation and distribution of energy from coal and water to produce steam and, later in the 20th Century, electricity.
The Information Age also requires
electricity
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...
to power the
global networks of
computers that process and store data. However, what dramatically accelerated the pace of adoption of The Information Age, as compared to previous ones, was the speed by which knowledge could be transferred and pervaded the entire human family in a few short decades. This acceleration came about with the adoptions of a new form of power. Beginning in 1972, engineers devised ways to harness light to convey data through
fiber optic cable. Today, light-based
optical networking
Optical networking is a means of communication that uses signals encoded in light to transmit information in various types of telecommunications networks. These include limited range Local area network, local-area networks (LAN) or Wide area networ ...
systems at the heart of telecom networks and the Internet span the globe and carry most of the information traffic to and from users and data storage systems.
There are different conceptualizations of the Information Age. Some focus on the evolution of information over the ages, distinguishing between the Primary Information Age and the Secondary Information Age. Information in the Primary Information Age was handled by
newspapers
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports ...
,
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...
and
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
. The Secondary Information Age was developed by the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
,
satellite television
Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna comm ...
s and
mobile phones. The Tertiary Information Age was emerged by media of the Primary Information Age interconnected with media of the Secondary Information Age as presently experienced.
Others classify it in terms of the well-established
Schumpeterian long waves or
Kondratiev waves. Here authors distinguish three different long-term meta
paradigms, each with different long waves. The first focused on the transformation of material, including
stone
In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its Chemical compound, chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks ...
,
bronze, and
iron
Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...
. The second, often referred to as
industrial revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
, was dedicated to the transformation of energy, including
water
Water (chemical formula ) is an Inorganic compound, inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living ...
,
steam,
electric
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...
, and
combustion power. Finally, the most recent metaparadigm aims at transforming
information. It started out with the proliferation of
communication
Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...
and
stored data
Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, Phonograph record, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA a ...
and has now entered the age of
algorithms, which aims at creating automated processes to convert the existing information into actionable knowledge.
Economics
Eventually,
Information and communication technology
Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications ( telephone lines and wireless signals) and computer ...
(ICT)—i.e.
computers,
computerized machinery,
fiber optics,
communication satellites
A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth. C ...
, the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
, and other ICT tools—became a significant part of the
world economy, as the development of
optical networking
Optical networking is a means of communication that uses signals encoded in light to transmit information in various types of telecommunications networks. These include limited range Local area network, local-area networks (LAN) or Wide area networ ...
and
microcomputers greatly changed many businesses and industries.
Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is a Greek American architect. He is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). Negroponte ...
captured the essence of these changes in his 1995 book, ''
Being Digital,'' in which he discusses the similarities and differences between products made of
atoms and products made of
bit
The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represente ...
s.
Jobs and income distribution
The Information Age has affected the
workforce in several ways, such as compelling workers to compete in a global
job market. One of the most evident concerns is the replacement of human labor by computers that can do their jobs faster and more effectively, thus creating a situation in which individuals who perform tasks that can easily be
automated
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...
are forced to find employment where their labor is not as disposable. This especially creates issue for those in
industrial cities, where solutions typically involve lowering
working time, which is often highly resisted. Thus, individuals who lose their jobs may be pressed to move up into joining "mind workers" (e.g.
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...
s,
doctors,
lawyers,
teachers,
professors
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
,
scientist
A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences.
In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...
s,
executives,
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
s,
consultants), who are able to compete successfully in the
world market and receive (relatively) high wages.
Along with automation, jobs traditionally associated with the
middle class (e.g.
assembly line
An assembly line is a manufacturing process (often called a ''progressive assembly'') in which parts (usually interchangeable parts) are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in se ...
,
data processing,
management, and
supervision) have also begun to disappear as result of
outsourcing.
[McGowan, Robert. 1991. "The Work of Nations by Robert Reich" (book review). '' Human Resource Management'' 30(4):535–38. . .] Unable to compete with those in
developing countries,
production
Production may refer to:
Economics and business
* Production (economics)
* Production, the act of manufacturing goods
* Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services)
* Production as a stati ...
and service workers in
post-industrial (i.e. developed) societies either lose their jobs through outsourcing, accept
wage cuts, or settle for
low-skill,
low-wage service jobs.
In the past, the economic fate of individuals would be tied to that of their nation's. For example, workers in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
were once well paid in comparison to those in other countries. With the advent of the Information Age and improvements in communication, this is no longer the case, as workers must now compete in a global
job market, whereby wages are less dependent on the success or failure of individual economies.
In effectuating a
globalized workforce, the internet has just as well allowed for increased opportunity in
developing countries, making it possible for workers in such places to provide in-person services, therefore competing directly with their counterparts in other nations. This
competitive advantage translates into increased opportunities and higher wages.
Automation, productivity, and job gain
The Information Age has affected the workforce in that
automation
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...
and computerization have resulted in higher
productivity
Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
coupled with net
job loss in
manufacturing
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...
. In the United States, for example, from January 1972 to August 2010, the number of people employed in manufacturing jobs fell from 17,500,000 to 11,500,000 while manufacturing value rose 270%.
Although it initially appeared that
job loss in the
industrial sector might be partially offset by the rapid growth of jobs in
information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of Data (computing), data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information te ...
, the
recession of March 2001 foreshadowed a sharp drop in the number of jobs in the sector. This pattern of decrease in jobs would continue until 2003, and data has shown that, overall, technology creates more jobs than it destroys even in the short run.
Information-intensive industry
Industry has become more information-intensive while less
labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the la ...
- and
capital-intensive. This has left important implications for the
workforce, as workers have become increasingly
productive as the value of their labor decreases. For the system of
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...
itself, the value of labor decreases, the value of
capital increases.
In the
classical model, investments in
human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, cultu ...
and
financial capital
Financial capital (also simply known as capital or equity in finance, accounting and economics) is any economic resource measured in terms of money used by entrepreneurs and businesses to buy what they need to make their products or to provi ...
are important predictors of the performance of a new
venture
Venture may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
*The Ventures, an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958
*"A Venture", 1971 song by the band Yes
*''Venture'', a 2010 EP by AJR
Games
* ''Venture'' (video game), a 1981 arcade gam ...
. However, as demonstrated by
Mark Zuckerberg and
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
, it now seems possible for a group of relatively inexperienced people with limited capital to succeed on a large scale.
Innovations
The Information Age was enabled by technology developed in the
Digital Revolution, which was itself enabled by building on the developments of the
Technological Revolution.
Transistors
The onset of the Information Age can be associated with the development of
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
technology.
The concept of a
field-effect transistor was first theorized by
Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in 1925.
The first practical transistor was the
point-contact transistor, invented by the engineers
Walter Houser Brattain
Walter Houser Brattain (; February 10, 1902 – October 13, 1987) was an American physicist at Bell Labs who, along with fellow scientists John Bardeen and William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. They shared t ...
and
John Bardeen while working for
William Shockley at
Bell Labs in 1947. This was a breakthrough that laid the foundations for modern technology.
Shockley's research team also invented the
bipolar junction transistor
A bipolar junction transistor (BJT) is a type of transistor that uses both electrons and electron holes as charge carriers. In contrast, a unipolar transistor, such as a field-effect transistor, uses only one kind of charge carrier. A bipola ...
in 1952.
The most widely used type of transistor is the
metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...
(MOSFET), invented by
Mohamed M. Atalla and
Dawon Kahng
Dawon Kahng ( ko, 강대원; May 4, 1931 – May 13, 1992) was a Korean-American electrical engineer and inventor, known for his work in solid-state electronics. He is best known for inventing the MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effe ...
at Bell Labs in 1960.
The
complementary MOS
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...
(CMOS) fabrication process was developed by
Frank Wanlass Frank Marion Wanlass (May 17, 1933 in Thatcher, AZ – September 9, 2010 in Santa Clara, California) was an American electrical engineer. He is best known for inventing CMOS (complementary MOS) logic with Chih-Tang Sah in 1963. CMOS has since ...
and
Chih-Tang Sah in 1963.
Computers
Before the advent of
electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
,
mechanical computers
A mechanical computer is a computer built from mechanical components such as levers and gears rather than electronic components. The most common examples are adding machines and mechanical counters, which use the turning of gears to increment outp ...
, like the
Analytical Engine in 1837, were designed to provide routine mathematical calculation and simple decision-making capabilities. Military needs during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
drove development of the first electronic computers, based on
vacuum tubes, including the
Z3, the
Atanasoff–Berry Computer,
Colossus computer
Colossus was a set of computers developed by British codebreakers in the years 1943–1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean and counting operations. Colossus ...
, and
ENIAC
ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one pac ...
.
The invention of the transistor enabled the era of
mainframe computers (1950s–1970s), typified by the
IBM 360
The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applica ...
. These large,
room-sized computers provided data calculation and
manipulation that was much faster than humanly possible, but were expensive to buy and maintain, so were initially limited to a few scientific institutions, large corporations, and government agencies.
The
germanium integrated circuit (IC) was invented by
Jack Kilby
Jack St. Clair Kilby (November 8, 1923 – June 20, 2005) was an American electrical engineer who took part (along with Robert Noyce of Fairchild) in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1 ...
at
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globa ...
in 1958. The
silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ta ...
integrated circuit was then invented in 1959 by
Robert Noyce at
Fairchild Semiconductor, using the
planar process developed by
Jean Hoerni, who was in turn building on
Mohamed Atalla's silicon
surface passivation
A surface, as the term is most generally used, is the outermost or uppermost layer of a physical object or space. It is the portion or region of the object that can first be perceived by an observer using the senses of sight and touch, and is ...
method developed at
Bell Labs in 1957.
Following the invention of the
MOS transistor
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...
by Mohamed Atalla and
Dawon Kahng
Dawon Kahng ( ko, 강대원; May 4, 1931 – May 13, 1992) was a Korean-American electrical engineer and inventor, known for his work in solid-state electronics. He is best known for inventing the MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effe ...
at Bell Labs in 1959,
the
MOS integrated circuit was developed by Fred Heiman and Steven Hofstein at
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
in 1962.
The
silicon-gate
In Semiconductor device fabrication, semiconductor electronics fabrication technology, a self-aligned gate is a transistor manufacturing approach whereby the gate (transistor), gate electrode of a MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effec ...
MOS IC was later developed by
Federico Faggin
Federico Faggin (, ; born 1 December 1941) is an Italian physicist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He led the 4004 (MCS-4) project and the design group d ...
at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968. With the advent of the MOS transistor and the MOS IC, transistor technology
rapidly improved, and the ratio of computing power to size increased dramatically, giving direct access to computers to ever smaller groups of people.
The first commercial single-chip microprocessor launched in 1971, the
Intel 4004
The Intel 4004 is a 4-bit central processing unit (CPU) released by Intel Corporation in 1971. Sold for US$60, it was the first commercially produced microprocessor, and the first in a long line of Intel CPUs.
The 4004 was the first significa ...
, which was developed by Federico Faggin using his silicon-gate MOS IC technology, along with
Marcian Hoff
Marcian Edward "Ted" Hoff Jr. (born October 28, 1937 in Rochester, New York) is one of the inventors of the microprocessor.
Education and work history
Hoff received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst ...
,
Masatoshi Shima and
Stan Mazor.
Along with electronic
arcade machine
An arcade cabinet, also known as an arcade machine or a coin-op cabinet or coin-op machine, is the housing within which an arcade game's electronic hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the Japanese Amusement Ma ...
s and
home video game console
A home video game console is a video game console that is designed to be connected to a display device, such as a television, and an external power source as to play video games. Home consoles are generally less powerful and customizable than ...
s pioneered by
Nolan Bushnell
Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consu ...
in the 1970s, the development of
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
s like the
Commodore PET
The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, ...
and
Apple II (both in 1977) gave individuals access to the computer. But
data sharing
Data sharing is the practice of making data used for scholarly research available to other investigators. Many funding agencies, institutions, and publication venues have policies regarding data sharing because transparency and openness are consid ...
between individual computers was either non-existent or largely
manual, at first using
punched card
A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
s and
magnetic tape, and later
floppy disks.
Data
The first developments for storing data were initially based on photographs, starting with
microphotography in 1851 and then
microform in the 1920s, with the ability to store documents on film, making them much more compact. Early
information theory and
Hamming codes were developed about 1950, but awaited technical innovations in data transmission and storage to be put to full use.
Magnetic-core memory was developed from the research of Frederick W. Viehe in 1947 and
An Wang
An Wang (; February 7, 1920 – March 24, 1990) was a Chinese–American computer engineer and inventor, and cofounder of computer company Wang Laboratories, which was known primarily for its dedicated word processing machines. Wang was an impo ...
at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
in 1949. With the advent of the MOS transistor, MOS
semiconductor memory was developed by John Schmidt at
Fairchild Semiconductor in 1964.
In 1967,
Dawon Kahng
Dawon Kahng ( ko, 강대원; May 4, 1931 – May 13, 1992) was a Korean-American electrical engineer and inventor, known for his work in solid-state electronics. He is best known for inventing the MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effe ...
and
Simon Sze
Simon Min Sze, or Shi Min (; born 1936), is a Chinese-American electrical engineer. He is best known for inventing the floating-gate MOSFET with Korean electrical engineer Dawon Kahng in 1967.
Biography
Sze was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu, and grew ...
at Bell Labs described in 1967 how the floating gate of an MOS semiconductor device could be used for the cell of a reprogrammable ROM.
Following the invention of flash memory by
Fujio Masuoka at
Toshiba in 1980, Toshiba commercialized
NAND flash memory in 1987.
Copper wire cables transmitting digital data connected
computer terminals and
peripherals
A peripheral or peripheral device is an auxiliary device used to put information into and get information out of a computer. The term ''peripheral device'' refers to all hardware components that are attached to a computer and are controlled by the ...
to mainframes, and special message-sharing systems leading to
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
, were first developed in the 1960s. Independent computer-to-computer networking began with
ARPANET in 1969. This expanded to become the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
(coined in 1974). Access to the Internet improved with the invention of the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
in 1991. The capacity expansion from
dense wave division multiplexing,
optical amplification
An optical amplifier is a device that amplifies an optical signal directly, without the need to first convert it to an electrical signal. An optical amplifier may be thought of as a laser without an optical cavity, or one in which feedback from ...
and
optical networking
Optical networking is a means of communication that uses signals encoded in light to transmit information in various types of telecommunications networks. These include limited range Local area network, local-area networks (LAN) or Wide area networ ...
in the mid-1990s led to record data transfer rates. By 2018, optical networks routinely delivered 30.4 terabits/s over a fiber optic pair, the data equivalent of 1.2 million simultaneous 4K HD video streams.
MOSFET scaling, the rapid miniaturization of MOSFETs at a rate predicted by
Moore's law,
led to computers becoming smaller and more powerful, to the point where they could be carried. During the 1980s1990s,
laptops were developed as a form of portable computer, and
personal digital assistants (PDAs) could be used while standing or walking.
Pagers
A pager (also known as a beeper or bleeper) is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response pagers and two-way pagers can also acknow ...
, widely used by the 1980s, were largely replaced by mobile phones beginning in the late 1990s, providing
mobile networking features to some computers. Now commonplace, this technology is extended to
digital cameras
A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...
and other wearable devices. Starting in the late 1990s,
tablets and then
smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
s combined and extended these abilities of computing, mobility, and information sharing.
Metal–oxide–semiconductor
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...
(MOS)
image sensors, which first began appearing in the late 1960s, led to the transition from analog to
digital imaging
Digital imaging or digital image acquisition is the creation of a digital representation of the visual characteristics of an object, such as a physical scene or the interior structure of an object. The term is often assumed to imply or include t ...
, and from analog to
digital cameras
A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...
, during the 1980s–1990s. The most common image sensors are the
charge-coupled device
A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
(CCD) sensor and the
CMOS (complementary MOS)
active-pixel sensor
An active-pixel sensor (APS) is an image sensor where each pixel sensor unit cell has a photodetector (typically a pinned photodiode) and one or more active transistors. In a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) active-pixel sensor, MOS field-e ...
(CMOS sensor).
Electronic paper, which has origins in the 1970s, allows digital information to appear as paper documents.
Personal computers
By 1976, there were several firms racing to introduce the first truly successful commercial personal computers. Three machines, the
Apple II,
PET 2001
The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, an ...
and
TRS-80 were all released in 1977, becoming the most popular by late 1978.
''Byte'' magazine later referred to Commodore, Apple, and Tandy as the "1977 Trinity". Also in 1977,
Sord Computer Corporation released the Sord M200 Smart Home Computer in Japan.
Apple II
Steve Wozniak (known as "Woz"), a regular visitor to
Homebrew Computer Club
The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986. The club had an influential role in the development of the microcomputer revolution and the rise of that asp ...
meetings, designed the single-board
Apple I computer and first demonstrated it there. With specifications in hand and an order for 100 machines at US$500 each from
the Byte Shop, Woz and his friend
Steve Jobs founded
Apple Computer.
About 200 of the machines sold before the company announced the Apple II as a complete computer. It had color graphics, a full QWERTY keyboard, and internal slots for expansion, which were mounted in a high quality streamlined plastic case. The monitor and I/O devices were sold separately. The original Apple II
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...
was only the built-in BASIC interpreter contained in ROM.
Apple DOS was added to support the diskette drive; the last version was "Apple DOS 3.3".
Its higher price and lack of
floating point BASIC, along with a lack of retail distribution sites, caused it to lag in sales behind the other Trinity machines until 1979, when it surpassed the PET. It was again pushed into 4th place when
Atari introduced its popular
Atari 8-bit systems.
Despite slow initial sales, the Apple II's lifetime was about eight years longer than other machines, and so accumulated the highest total sales. By 1985 2.1 million had sold and more than 4 million Apple II's were shipped by the end of its production in 1993.
Optical networking
Optical communication plays a crucial role in
communication networks. Optical communication provides the transmission backbone for the
telecommunications
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...
and computer networks that underlie the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
, the foundation for the
Digital Revolution and Information Age.
The two core technologies are the optical fiber and light amplification (the
optical amplifier). In 1953, Bram van Heel demonstrated image transmission through bundles of
optical fibers with a transparent cladding. The same year,
Harold Hopkins and
Narinder Singh Kapany at
Imperial College succeeded in making image-transmitting bundles with over 10,000 optical fibers, and subsequently achieved image transmission through a 75 cm long bundle which combined several thousand fibers.
Gordon Gould invented the
optical amplifier and the
laser, and also established the first optical telecommunications company,
Optelecom, to design communication systems. The firm was a co-founder in
Ciena Corp., the venture that popularized the
optical amplifier with the introduction of the first
dense wave division multiplexing system. This massive scale communication technology has emerged as the common basis of all
telecommunication networks and, thus, a foundation of the Information Age.
Economy, society and culture
Manuel Castells captures the significance of the Information Age in ''The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture'' when he writes of our global interdependence and the new relationships between economy, state and society, what he calls "a new society-in-the-making." He cautions that just because humans have dominated the material world, does not mean that the Information Age is the end of history:
See also
*
Attention economy
*
Attention inequality
Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...
*
Big data
*
Cognitive-cultural economy
*
Computer crime
*
Cyberterrorism
Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, the loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation. Acts of deliberate, la ...
*
Cyberwarfare
*
Datamation – first print magazine dedicated solely to covering information technology
*
Digital dark age
*
Digital detox
*
Digital divide
*
Digital transformation
*
Digital world
''Wanderland'' is the second studio album by American singer Kelis. It was released on October 17, 2001, by Virgin Records. The album's only single, " Young, Fresh n' New", peaked at number 32 on the UK Singles Chart. As of October 2004, ''Wander ...
*
Imagination age, the hypothesized successor of the information age: a period in which creativity and imagination become the primary creators of economic value
*
Indigo Era
*
Information explosion The information explosion is the rapid increase in the amount of published information or data and the effects of this abundance. As the amount of available data grows, the problem of managing the information becomes more difficult, which can lead ...
*
Information revolution
The term information revolution describes current economic, social and technological trends beyond the Industrial Revolution.
Many competing terms have been proposed that focus on different aspects of this societal development.
The British polymat ...
*
Information society
An information society is a society where the usage, creation, distribution, manipulation and integration of information is a significant activity. Its main drivers are information and communication technologies, which have resulted in rapid inf ...
*
Internet governance
Internet governance consists of a system of laws, rules, policies and practices that dictate how its board members manage and oversee the affairs of any internet related-regulatory body. This article describes how the Internet was and is currentl ...
*
Netocracy
*
Social Age
Social AgeAzua, Maria (2009) The Social Factor, IBM Press, encompasses both societal and technological changes succeeding the Information Age
The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, Silicon Age, or New Media Age) is a ...
*
Technological determinism
Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that assumes that a society's technology progresses by following its own internal logic of efficiency, while determining the development of the social structure and cultural values. The term is b ...
*
Telecommunications
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...
*
Zettabyte Era
The Zettabyte Era or Zettabyte Zone is a period of human and computer science history that started in the mid-2010s. The precise starting date depends on whether it is defined as when the global IP traffic first exceeded one zettabyte, which happ ...
*
The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age
*
Information and communication technologies for environmental sustainability
References
Further reading
* Oliver Stengel et al. (2017). ''Digitalzeitalter - Digitalgesellschaft'', Springer
*
Mendelson, Edward (June 2016).
In the Depths of the Digital Age'' The New York Review of Books
* Bollacker, Kurt D. (2010)
Avoiding a Digital Dark Age',
American Scientist, March–April 2010, Volume 98, Number 2, p. 106ff
*
Castells, Manuel. (1996–98). ''
The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture'', 3 vols. Oxford: Blackwell.
* Gelbstein, E. (2006) ''Crossing the Executive Digital Divide''.
External links
Articles on the impact of the Information Age on businessnbsp;– at ''Information Age'' magazine
Beyond the Information Ageby Dave Ulmer
Information Age Anthology Vol Iby Alberts and Papp (CCRP, 1997) (PDF)
Information Age Anthology Vol IIby Alberts and Papp (CCRP, 2000) (PDF)
Information Age Anthology Vol IIIby Alberts and Papp (CCRP, 2001) (PDF)
Understanding Information Age Warfareby Alberts et al. (CCRP, 2001) (PDF)
Information Age Transformationby Alberts (CCRP, 2002) (PDF)
The Unintended Consequences of Information Age Technologiesby Alberts (CCRP, 1996) (
PDF)
History & Discussion of the Information AgeScience Museum - Information Age
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Digital media
Digital divide
Contemporary history
Historical eras
Postmodernism
Cultural trends