Living in the Information Age
Wikipedia defines the Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age) as a historic period beginning in the late 20th century and characterized an economy primarily based upon information technology.
While semi-conductor based digital electronics were the underlying reason for the Information Age, the driving force behind it was what we refer to as the “Internet” or “World Wide Web”. The Internet has become so ubiquitous (present everywhere) that it’s hard to imagine that it wasn’t as widespread until the 1990’s.
The History of Personal Computers
Personal computers started getting popular by the end of the 1970’s and were very popular by the end of the 1980’s.
As technology became more advanced, PC’s became smaller, faster and more powerful.
Modems
Modems like the Hayes one in the picture could connect at a speed of 300 bit/s so users at work or home could link their computer to the earliest of networks using conventional phone lines.
The speed was, of course, really, really low since limited rates were possible over phone lines. PC’s were getting faster and more efficient while networks were still very basic.
Early Internet
The U.S. Department of Defense developed the Internet during the 1970s as a series of interconnected networks of their departments. As the technology progressed, the NSFNET project interconnected Universities and research organizations for research communication.
World Wide Web
In 1989, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an information system where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs, such as https://www.example.com/), which may be interlinked by hypertext, and are accessible over the Internet. (Wikipedia)
It was used for commercial purposes where companies could create web pages to promote their businesses and sell products.
WWW brought the Internet to homes and offices, changing the way we communicate, buy and sell, study, work, find and share information.
Today's Internet and its impact on our world
The Information Age has affected everything we do today.
Work: From sharing information and working with teams across continents to working remotely, more efficient administrative processes and lesser manual effort, how we work has completely been changed.
Communicate: Email, video conferencing calls, messaging apps and social media have changed how we communicate.
Learn and Research: From a free online classes to video lessons, research shared across institutions to big data processed on supercomputers, we now know and learn more than we ever did.
Shop: We now have the ability to shop for almost anything – food, clothes, electronics, education travel and events online.
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