Information Age

The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age) is a historic period in the 21st century characterized by the rapid shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based on information technology. The onset of the Information Age can be associated with the invention of the transistor, particularly the MOSFET (metal-oxide-silicon field-effect transistor), which revolutionized modern technology and became the fundamental building block of digital electronics in the information age. The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age) is a historic period in the 21st century characterized by the rapid shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based on information technology. The onset of the Information Age can be associated with the invention of the transistor, particularly the MOSFET (metal-oxide-silicon field-effect transistor), which revolutionized modern technology and became the fundamental building block of digital electronics in the information age. According to the UN Public Administration Network, the Information Age formed by capitalizing on computer microminiaturization advances. This evolution of technology in daily life and social organization has led to the modernization of information and communication processes becoming the driving force of social evolution. Library expansion was calculated in 1945 by Fremont Rider to double in capacity every 16 years if sufficient space were made available. He advocated replacing bulky, decaying printed works with miniaturized microform analog photographs, which could be duplicated on-demand for library patrons or other institutions. He did not foresee the digital technology that would follow decades later to replace analog microform with digital imaging, storage, and transmission media. Automated, potentially lossless digital technologies allowed vast increases in the rapidity of information growth. Moore's law, which was formulated around 1965, calculated that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.