The Information Age

We are currently living in the information, where communication has been wilted down to an instant text or phone call and no longer requires us to meet physically. All of the greatest advances in the 20^th and 21^st century have been communication where it is extremely accessible and easy to get information from one place to another within seconds.

Communication has helped to spread things, to make it easily accessible to talk to those over the seas and to keep close contact with those we never see or physically meet. Newspapers where the start of a surge of information that was able to meet many people in one country and multiple countries at a mass rate, you didn't need to be at the crime scene to know the crime or be in parliament to know what the government were doing.

The next step in the information age was direct communication, it started with the use of a telegraph, radio and household phones which is when the information age really took over as you were able to instantly make a call and connect with someone who could have been 100’s of miles away.

However the biggest step in the information age was the discovery of the computer, the first type of computer was an electronic calculator which was an amazing discovery and in 1969 they were able to mass produce them in pocket size, but the newest discovery did come at a high cost of nearly £1000. But computers would generally take up rooms and would be used for design and storing data, however this all changed when the first PC (Personal Computer) came out in 1986 it had 256 bytes of memory and was situated on a circuit board. From then on the computer industry expanded drastically and began being sold in mass quantities with many different functions and abilities to them.

Another big step in the advances in the information age is the internet which expanded the limits of communication and this has only happening the last 10 years, we are now able to communicate and use the internet as a source of information 24/7.  The first company to be able to affectively use the internet on a device as small as a phone was Apple who created the iPhone which allowed you to use the internet on a little device you could take anywhere with you and ever since smart phones have been competing to be the fastest have the most efficient and easy access to the internet wireless.

 

When everything became more accessible and we were able to get information instantaneously is what makes us the information age, information is now able to be stored on tiny little chips which can store millions even billions of bits of information. From the PC came the laptop which was an easily movable computer to now a tablet which is compact and small enough for anyone to take nearly anywhere. TV’s are now also computers we can download things onto them and use them as ways of storing information and using thins like social media through the TV. It was once said that “There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home” and this have been disproved since the day it was said in 1977 as it would be a rare find if you found a house without a computer in it.

The capacity for the internet and micro chips to store information and to make our lives easier is expanding everyday, Bill gates himself said that “640K is enough for anybody” and he couldn't have been more wrong. In fact the average phone holds about 8GB of information and that is only one piece of information technology let alone the laptops, TV's and various devices they may have at home.

All these factors show just how rapidly we have entered the information age and just how much it is progressing, very few will grow up without a keyboard or a TV or even a mobile phone. This only highlights how knowledge is power and the more we progress in information technology the more it takes over and begins to run everyone’s lives being a great part of our everyday activities and it is only going to get bigger and even better.