0.4 Three special events in the history of technology for creating

Introduction

The development of technologies for encoding, storing, communicating, and exploiting information is a majorfeature in the history of the human species. Although this development has generally progressed smoothly over time, we feel itis valuable to identify three significant points of rapid change or “paradigm shifts.” The first and possibly most revolutionary changewas the invention of writing and its companion, literacy—the transition from an oral to a writing culture. The second was theinvention of the printing press—the transition from hand-writing to the print culture.

We are now in the midst of a third transition to an electronic or digital culture. A convergence of severaltechnologies has created new systems for dealing with information that are potentially as revolutionary as the development ofliteracy and the invention of the printing press. The base for this transition was established in the 1940s with the invention of thedigital computer and the development of information theory. It was empowered by the invention of the transistor and integrated circuitand has blossomed thanks to the connectivity provided by the Internet and wireless technology and the storage provided bysemiconductor, hard disk, and optical memory. The ever-increasing power of computer and communications hardware has been accompaniedby ever more powerful software in the form of computer languages, operating systems, communication protocols, and searchtechnologies.

It may be that most people feel they live in a time of major change, but history reveals that few actually do. Onepurpose of this paper is to examine earlier transitions in order to establish that we are indeed currently in another paradigm shift. Asecond purpose is to challenge the usual pattern of discovering after the fact that something big has happened and then determininghow to mitigate the damage or inefficiencies that seem inevitably to ensue from major change and how to take advantage of the newopportunities and capabilities that are opened. For example, literacy was first an improvement and extension of the oraltradition; it subsequently created completely new systems for human uses of information. The printing press was first an improvement onthe hand-written method of producing books; it then transformed the entire literate world and extended it to the masses. Today, theinformation age has produced a setting in which new information systems will transform not only the way we develop and exploitinformation, but also the way we interact with each other.