Information Revolution Vs. Industrial Revolution - Technology

TECHNOLOGY

Like previous economic revolutions, the Information Revolution is marked most noticeably by a series of technological breakthroughs. In this case, the developments in electronics and computer technologies, along with dramatic changes in telecommunications, provided the basis for economic change. One of the central dates for the Information Revolution was 1959, when two scientists working separately—Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor—arrived almost simultaneously at the invention of the silicon chip, the device that inscribes electronic information in a microscopic space, allowing for the mass production—and mass dissemination—of computers. With the vastly enhanced powers of memory, calculation, and control placed in a microscopic chip, computers were poised to assume a central role in economic life. Following this breakthrough, computers came to constitute the central infrastructure of everything from office telephone networks to transportation control systems to industrial production facilities, setting the stage for further information-breakthroughs once the vastly enhanced communication powers of the Internet were unleashed.

Of course, one of the preeminent—and least expected—hallmarks of the Information Revolution is electronic commerce. E-commerce, in theory, takes the potential of the information economy to its logical conclusion by propelling commercial activity into the borderless world of hyperspace, where transactions for everything from groceries to industrial equipment take place with little regard for geography and with nearly instantaneous satisfaction of commercial wants. Of course, as of the early 2000s e-commerce still had a long way to go before turning this theory into a smooth reality; e-commerce models were still in the gestation process, and no clear paradigm had emerged to set the stage for the explosive e-commerce growth most analysts expected was on the way. But even in its crude earliest versions, e-commerce already altered conceptions of business strategy and relationships, and on the consumer side e-commerce overhauled customer expectations of speed and convenience, pushing the field of business competition to new grounds.