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This essay provides information about Information Technology and Social Transformation – Essay !
Although the technological inventions such as telephone by Bell in 1876, radio by Marconi in 1898, vacuum tube by De Forest in 1906 were landmark inventions in technological development, major technological brake through leading to a technological revolution in the human history based on electronics based technologies can be said to happened during and after the Second World War.
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The invention of transistor in 1947 made possible the processing of electronic impulses at a fast pace in binary mode of interruption and amplification, thus enabling the coding of the logic and of communication with and between machines. These processing devices are semiconductors, which are popularly called as chips. A decisive step in microelectronics had taken place with the invention of integrated circuit in 1957. It triggered a technological explosion. The giant leap forward in the diffusion of microelectronics in machine came in 1971 with the invention by an Intel engineer of Silicon Valley Ted Hoff, of microprocessor, that is the computer on a chip. Thus, information processing power could be installed everywhere.
The power of chips is evaluated by a combination of three characteristics: their integration capacity, indicated by the smallest line width in the chip measured in microns (1 micron is equal to 1 millionth of an inch); their memory capacity, measured in bits: thousands (k) and millions (megabits); and the speed of the microprocessor measured in megahertz. The technological advancements of the microprocessors were so fast that while the first microprocessor of 1971 laid in lines of about 6.5 microns the microprocessor of 1999 measured 0.25 microns. Greater miniaturization, further specialisation and the decreasing price of increasingly powerful chips made it possible to place them in every machine in our everyday life.
The advent of microprocessor in 1971, with the capacity to put a computer on a chip, turned the electronics world and indeed the world itself upside down. The microcomputer or personal computer software also emerged in mid 1980s out of the enthusiasm generated by two Harvard dropouts, Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Having realised its potential they went onto found Microsoft, today’s software giant.
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Indeed, to advances in microelectronics and software it has to be added major leaps forward in networking capabilities, which was made possible by major developments booth in telecommunications and computer networking technologies during 1970s, during this period telecommunications also had been revolutionised by a combination of ‘node’ technologies (electronic switches and routers) and new linkages (transmission technologies). Major advances in optoelectronics (fibre optics and laser transmission) and digital packet transmission technology dramatically broadened the capacity of transmission lines. Each leap and bound in specific technological field amplifies the effects of related information technologies.