(HEET) Information Age Lesson
Information Age Lesson
Introduction
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The transistor developed by AT&T Bell Labs led to the development of the integrated circuit. It is this semiconductor technology and further development of microprocessors that enabled the creation of the personal computer. Most of the data driven technologies and services we experience are a result of personal computing technologies. In parallel, the telecommunications industry was growing and providing greater bandwidth for increased speed and capacity as content was transitioning from predominately analog voice service, to a portion of data through signal conversion devices, and then to our current mix of digital content and services. The ability to expand the telephone network for the demand of services required the conversion of signals to digital format. Analog information such as voice is now digitally converted for the higher capacity transmission. Note the following graph illustrating the rapid conversion from analog signals to digital. This was a worldwide rapid technological change that has had considerable impacts to economic and social infrastructures.
Driven by Bell Labs research, communications companies developed wireless cellular communications. Then the communications companies developed digital communications over the wireless cellular networks. Texting, video sharing, social networking, and access to the World Wide Web became available through smart phones and portable computing devices. Throughout all the hardware innovations, software and application development has grown to unprecedented levels.
As you study the significant aspects of the Information Age, consider the social, economic, and environmental impacts upon our world.
Challenge
Take Away
The following is an example of how the Information Age was positively impacted by governmental influence.
On December 12, 1991, a bill created by the United States Senate directed the funding for the national “Information Superhighway”. Senate bill 272 – High-Performance Computing Act of 1991. Some of the actions of this bill were to:
- Fund the DARPA information network
- Required DARPA to support research and development of technology required for the network
- Required the National Science Foundation (NSF) to be in charge of development of the network and to ensure access to the network for universities, colleges, libraries
- Required linkage of research and educational institution, government and industry in every state
- Directed improvement of the public telephone network for high speed data capability
- Requirements of several agencies to invest, support, research for this network
- Computer systems housing classified information would not be included in the network
This was the legislation that enabled funding and federal resources to build the Internet through investment in high performance computers and development of the technologies and protocols to build the network.
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