The term information revolution (sometimes called also the "informational revolution") describes current economic, social and technological trends beyond the Industrial Revolution.
Many competing terms have been proposed that focus on different aspects of this societal development. The British polymath crystallographer J. D. Bernal (1939) introduced the term "scientific and technical revolution" in his book The Social Function of Science in order to describe the new role that science and technology are coming to play within society. He asserted that science is becoming a "productive force", using the Marxist Theory of Productive Forces. After some controversy, the term was taken up by authors and institutions of the then-Soviet Bloc. Their aim was to show that socialism was a safe home for the scientific and technical ("technological" for some authors) revolution, referred to by the acronym STR. The book Civilization at the Crossroads, edited by the Czech philosopher Radovan Richta (1969), became a standard reference for this topic.
Daniel Bell (1980) challenged this theory and advocated post-industrial society, which would lead to a service economy rather than socialism. Many other authors presented their views, including Zbigniew Brzezinski (1976) with his "Technetronic Society".
Read more about Information Revolution: Information in Social and Economic Activities, Measuring and Modeling The Information Revolution
Famous quotes containing the words information and/or revolution:
“But while ignorance can make you insensitive, familiarity can also numb. Entering the second half-century of an information age, our cumulative knowledge has changed the level of what appalls, what stuns, what shocks.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental,—came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him and merely lies there because no revolution or no robber takes it away.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)