NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Digital Revolution

The Digital Revolution refers to the sweeping changes brought about by computing and communication technology during the latter half of the 20th century. Analogous to the Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution marked the beginning of the Information Age. The term digital here refers to digital computers. The Digital Revolution was enabled by the mass production and widespread use of digital logic circuits. Image File history File links Circle-question. ... Image File history File links Information_icon. ... Image File history File links Information_icon. ... A buzzword (also known as a fashion word or vogue word) is an idiom, often a neologism, commonly used in managerial, technical, administrative, and sometimes political environments. ... In rhetoric, a tautology is a use of redundant language in speech or writing, or, put simply, saying the same thing twice. // Tautology, often regarded as a fault of style, was defined by Fowler as saying the same thing twice. In fact, it is not necessary for the entire meaning... Abstraction is the process of reducing the information content of a concept, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2166x1530, 901 KB) Summary This is a photo of a computer lab on the university of warwick campus. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2166x1530, 901 KB) Summary This is a photo of a computer lab on the university of warwick campus. ... Originally, the word computing was synonymous with counting and calculating, and a science and technology that deals with the original sense of computing mathematical calculations. ... Look up Communication in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... By the mid 20th century humans had achieved a level of thinking mastery sufficient to leave the surface of the planet for the first time and explore space. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999... In the Earths history there have been a number of agricultural revolutions. ... A Watt steam engine. ... It has been suggested that Digital Age be merged into this article or section. ... A digital system is one that uses discrete values (often electrical voltages), especially those representable as binary numbers, or non-numeric symbols such as letters or icons, for input, processing, transmission, storage, or display, rather than a continuous spectrum of values (ie, as in an analog system). ... ... A Motorola 68000-based computer with various TTL chips. ... An integrated circuit (IC) is a thin chip consisting of at least two interconnected semiconductor devices, mainly transistors, as well as passive components like resistors. ...

Brief history

The underlying technology was invented in the latter half of the 20th century and became economical for widespread adoption after the invention of the Personal Computer. The digital revolution transformed technology that previously was analog into a binary representation of ones and zeros. By doing this, it became possible to make multiple generation copies that were identical to the original. In digital communications, for example, repeating hardware was able to amplify the digital signal and pass it on with no loss of information in the signal. (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999...

In multimedia applications, the digital revolution marked the transition from the storage of information on fixed material objects dedicated to specific purposes (books for words, phonograph records or audio cassettes for sound, film for images), to the storage of all information in a binary digital format, which is readily stored on a variety of media. Of equal importance to the revolution was the ability to easily move the digital information between media, and to access or distribute it remotely. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A chained book in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University A Chinese bamboo book, in a collection at the University of California, Riverside. ... Manufacturers put records inside protective and decorative cardboard jackets and an inner paper sleeve to protect the grooves from dust and scratches. ... Typical 60-minute Compact Cassette. ... Film stock is the term for photographic film on which films are recorded. ... The binary numeral system (base 2 numerals) represents numeric values using two symbols, typically 0 and 1. ... A digital system is one that uses discrete values (often electrical voltages), especially those representable as binary numbers, or non-numeric symbols such as letters or icons, for input, processing, transmission, storage, or display, rather than a continuous spectrum of values (ie, as in an analog system). ...

A major landmark in the revolution was the transition from analog to digital recorded music. In the 1980s, the digital format of optical compact discs supplanted analog formats, such as vinyl records and cassette tapes, as the popular medium of choice.^[1] The 1980s refers to the years of 1980 to 1989. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... 33⅓ LP vinyl record album The vinyl record is a type of gramophone record, most popular from the 1950s to the 1990s, that was most commonly used for mass-produced recordings of music. ...

Technological basis

Underlying the digital revolution was the development of the digital electronic computer, the personal computer, and particularly the microprocessor with its steadily increasing performance (as described by Moore's law), which enabled computer technology to be embedded into a huge range of objects from cameras to personal music players. Equally important was the development of transmission technologies including computer networking, the Internet and digital broadcasting. 3G phones, whose social penetration grew exponentially in the 2000s, also played a very large role in the digital revolution as they simultaneously provide ubiquitous entertainment, communications, and online connectivity. Computing hardware has been an important component of the process of calculation and data storage since it became useful for numerical values to be processed and shared. ... A microprocessor (sometimes abbreviated ÂµP) is a programmable digital electronic component that incorporates the functions of a central processing unit (CPU) on a single semiconducting integrated circuit (IC). ... Growth of transistor counts for Intel processors (dots) and Moores Law (upper line=18 months; lower line=24 months) Moores Law is the empirical observation made in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles every 24 months. ... An embedded system is a special-purpose system in which the computer is completely encapsulated by the device it controls. ... 10 MP Nikon D200 and a Nikon film scanner The Canon EOS 350D The Canon PowerShot A95 Digital photography, as opposed to film photography, uses electronic devices to record the image as binary data. ... Apple iPod, the most popular hard drive-based digital audio player An embedded hard drive-based player (Creative Zen Vision:M), one of the many alternatives for the iPod An MP3 CD player (Philips Expanium) Some mobile phones can be used as digital audio players, such as the Nokia 6233. ... Blue RJ-45 patchcord of the type commonly used to connect network devices. ... Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), also known as Eureka 147, is a technology for broadcasting of audio using digital radio transmission. ... It has been suggested that Evolution to 3G be merged into this article or section. ...

Socio-economic impact

The economic impact of the digital revolution has been large. Without the World Wide Web (WWW), for example, globalization and outsourcing would not be nearly as viable as they are today. The digital revolution radically changed the way individuals and companies interact. Small regional companies were suddenly given access to much larger markets. Concepts such as On-demand services and manufacturing and rapidly dropping technology costs made possible new innovations in all aspects of industry and everyday life. WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet. ... // A typical - but restrictive - definition can be taken from the International Monetary Fund, which stresses the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and services, free international capital flows, and more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology. ... Outsourcing entered the business lexicon in the 1980s and often refers to the delegation of non-core operations from internal production to an external entity specialising in the management of that operation. ... This article is in need of attention. ...

In some cases, company employees' pervasive use of portable digital devices and work related computers for personal use--email, instant messaging, computer games, and even wikipedia--were often found to, or perceived to, reduce those companies' productivity. Personal computing and other non-work related digital activities in the workplace thus helped lead to stronger forms of privacy invasion, such as keystroke recording and information filtering applications (Spy software and Censorware). Spy Software (also known as Computer Monitoring Software or Keylogger) secretly records a computer user by capturing all keystrokes, websites visited, and chat conversations. ... DansGuardian blocking whitehouse. ...

Privacy in general became a concern during the digital revolution. The ability to store and utilize such large amounts of diverse information opened possibilities for tracking of individual activities and interests. Alarmists and nationalists alike feared the possibility of an Orwellian future where government controls the populace with such information, while consumer advocates opposed the ability to direct market to individuals and profit from involuntarily shared personal information. how would you feel if teh govenment could watch you while you were on the toilet? Its getting really bad adn the politicians dont understnad that there are other ways! If you can do something about th eintrusion, do it . ... Alarmism is the production of needless warnings. ... Nationalism is an ideology that creates and sustains a nation as a concept of a common identity for groups of humans. ... Orwellian describes a situation, idea, or condition that George Orwell identified as being inimical to the welfare of a free-society. ...

The Internet, especially the WWW in the 1990s, opened whole new avenues for communication and information sharing. The ability to easily and rapidly share information on a global scale brought with it a whole new level of freedom of speech. Individuals and organizations were suddenly given the ability to publish on any topic, to a global audience, at a negligible cost, particularly in comparison to any previous communication technology. Graphic representation of the world wide web around Wikipedia The World Wide Web (WWW, or simply Web) is an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Large cooperative projects could be endeavored (e.g. Open-source software projects, SETI@home). Communities of like-minded individuals were formed (e.g. MySpace, Tribe.net). Small regional companies were suddenly given access to a larger marketplace. Open source software refers to computer software available with its source code and under an open source license. ... SETI@home logo SETI@home (SETI at home) is a distributed computing project using Internet-connected computers, hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. ... MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos. ... Tribe. ...

In other cases, special interest groups as well as social and religious institutions found much of the content objectionable, even dangerous. Many parents and religious organizations, especially in the United States, became alarmed by pornography being more readily available to minors. In other circumstances the proliferation of information on such topics as child pornography, building bombs, committing acts of terrorism, and other violent activities were alarming to many different groups of people. Such concerns contributed to arguments for censorship and regulation on the WWW. Pornographic movies Pornography (Porn) (from Greek Ï€ÏŒÏÎ½Î· (porne) prostitute and Î³ÏÎ±Ï†Î® (grafe) writing), more informally referred to as porn or porno, is the explicit representation of the human body or sexual activity with the goal of sexual arousal. ...

Copyright and trademark issues also found new life in the digital revolution. The widespread ability of consumers to produce and distribute exact reproductions of protected works dramatically changed the intellectual property landscape, especially in the music, film, and television industries. Copyright symbol Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. ... A trademark, trade mark, â„¢ or Â®[1] is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by an organization to uniquely identify itself and its products and services to consumers, and to distinguish the organization and its products or services from those of other organizations. ...

The digital revolution, especially regarding privacy, copyright, censorship and information sharing, remains a controversial topic. As the digital revolution progresses it remains unclear to what extent society has been impacted and will be altered in the future.

Concerns

While there have been huge benefits to society from the digital revolution, especially in terms of the accessibility of information, there are a number of concerns. Expanded powers of communication and information sharing, increased capabilities for existing technologies, and the advent of new technology brought with it many potential opportunities for exploitation. The digital revolution helped usher in a new age of mass surveillance, generating a range of new civil and human rights issues. Reliability of data became an issue as information could easily be replicated, but not easily verified. The digital revolution made it possible to store and track facts, articles, statistics, as well as minutia hitherto unfeasible. Quantity and quality of information became relevant issues in the late 20th century. Mass surveillance is the pervasive surveillance of an entire population, or a substantial fraction thereof. ... Civil rights or positive rights are those legal rights retained by citizens and protected by the government. ... Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ...

From the perspective of the historian, a large part of human history is known through physical objects from the past that have been found or preserved, particularly in written documents. Digital records are easy to create but also easy to delete and modify. Changes in storage formats can make recovery of data difficult or near impossible, as can the storage of information on obsolete media for which reproduction equipment is unavailable, and even identifying what such data is and whether it is of interest can be near impossible if it is no longer easily readable, or if there is a large number of such files to identify. Information passed off as authentic research or study must be scrutinized and verified. With such massive proliferation of information it became possible to write an article citing wholly false sources, also based on false sources. An historian is someone who writes history, a written accounting of the past. ... A file format is a particular way to encode information for storage in a computer file. ...

These problems are further compounded by the use of digital rights management and other copy prevention technologies which, being designed to only allow the data to be read on specific machines, may well make future data recovery impossible. Interestingly, the Voyager Golden Record, which is intended to be read by an intelligent extraterrestrial (perhaps a suitable parallel to a human from the distant future), is recorded in analog rather than digital format specifically for easy interpretation and analysis. Digital Rights Management (generally abbreviated to DRM) is any of several technologies used by publishers (or copyright owners) to control access to and usage of digital data (such as software, music, movies) and hardware, handling usage restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work. ... Copy prevention, also known as copy protection, is any technical measure designed to prevent duplication of information. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... The Voyager Golden Record. ... The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, currently used by the SETI project in the search for extraterrestrial life Extraterrestrial life is life that may exist and originate outside the planet Earth, the only place in the universe currently known to support life. ... An analog or analogue signal is any continuously variable signal. ...

Contents

Brief history

Technological basis

Socio-economic impact

Concerns

See also