Digital Revolution
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 the representation of information in the form of binary digits (0 and 1), which can be processed by computers. The Digital Revolution was enabled by the mass production and widespread use of digital logic circuits.
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[edit] 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 PC. 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.
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.
A major landmark in the revolution was the transition from analog to digital recorded music. In the 1980s, the digital format of optical compact disks supplanted analog formats, such as vinyl records and cassette tapes, as the popular medium of choice.<ref>"The Digital Revolution Ahead for the Audio Industry," Business Week. New York, March 16, 1981, p. 40D.</ref>
[edit] 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 2000's, also played a very large role in the digital revolution as they simultaneously provide ubiquitous entertainment, communications, and online connectivity.
[edit] 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Issues of copyright and trademark also found new life in the digital revolution. The capability to exactly reproduce original information and files, coupled with information sharing, complicated matters of intellectual property, especially in the music, film, and television.
The digital revolution, especially regarding privacy, copyright, censorship and information sharing, remains a controversial topic. As the digital revolution progresses it remains unclear at this time to what extent society has been impacted and will be altered in the future.
[edit] Concerns
While there have been huge benefits to 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 twentieth century.
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. 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.
[edit] See also
[edit] Wikibooks : UNDP-APDIP Books
This e-primer provides a comprehensive review of the digital and information and communications technology revolutions and how they are changing the economy and society. The primer also addresses the challenges arising from the widening digital divide.de:Digitale Revolution hu:Digitális forradalom zh:數字化革命 ru:Цифровая революция
