6.1 The digital revolution

• Q: Ever heard of the digitalization/digital revolution?
• = Third Industrial Revolution
• “shift from mechanical and analogue electronic technology to digital electronics[…] from the late 1950s to the late 1970s with the adoption and proliferation of digital computers and digital record keeping” (Wikipedia)
• “Central to this revolution is the mass production and widespread use of digital logic circuits, and its derived technologies, including the computer, digital cellular phone, and the Internet” (Wikipedia)
• World’s technologically stored information: late 1980s, less than 1% → 94% in 2007 → 99% by 2014 (Hilbert and López 2011)
• Global Internet usage (number of people who use the Internet worldwide), Internet usage across countries; Smartphone penetration

References

Hilbert, Martin, and Priscila López. 2011. “The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information.” Science 332 (6025): 60–65.