The Contemporary Digital Revolution

The Digital Revolution refers to the advancement of technology from analog electronic and mechanical devices to the digital technology available today. The era started to during the 1980s and is ongoing. The Digital Revolution also marks the beginning of the Information Era.

• The Digital Revolution is sometimes also called the Third Industrial Revolution.
• Also called the third industrial revolution, it is the era of digital electronic equipment that started around the 1980s and is still continuing.
• The widespread diffusion of telecommunications and computer technology that is creating entirely new ways of working and socializing as well as challenging, and even destroying, many others.
• It is the change from analog, mechanical, and electronic technology to digital technology. Learn more in: Creation of an Instrument to Measure Website Effectiveness Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
• An expression used to denote the extraordinary transition in media, communications, devices (and ultimately economics and society), from an analogue form (i.e., continuous, linear signals representing information) to a form expressed in discrete digits (actually: bits). This started in the early 1980s.

The development and advancement of digital technologies started with one fundamental idea: The Internet. Here is a brief timeline of how the Digital Revolution progressed:

• 1947-1979 – The transistor, which was introduced in 1947, paved the way for the development of advanced digital computers. The government, military and other organizations made use of computer systems during the 1950s and 1960s. This research eventually led to the creation of the World Wide Web.
• 1980s – The computer became a familiar machine and by the end of the decade, being able to use one became a necessity for many jobs. The first cell phone was also introduced during this decade.
• 1990s – By 1992, the World Wide Web had been introduced, and by 1996 the Internet became a normal part of most business operations. By the late 1990s, the Internet became a part of everyday life for almost half of the American population.
• 2000s – By this decade, the Digital Revolution had begun to spread all over the developing world; mobile phones were commonly seen, the number of Internet users continued to grow, and the television started to transition from using analog to digital signals.
• 2010 and beyond – By this decade, Internet makes up more than 25 percent of the world’s population. Mobile communication has also become very important, as nearly 70 percent of the world’s population owns a mobile phone. The connection between Internet websites and mobile gadgets has become a standard in communication. It is predicted that by 2015, the innovation of tablet computers will far surpass personal computers with the use of the Internet and the promise of cloud computing services. This will allow users to consume media and use business applications on their mobile devices, applications that would otherwise be too much for such devices to handle.