User:Architect21c/InnAge

The HMM Age

(also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age) is a period in human history characterized by the shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based on information computerization. The onset of the Information Age is associated with the Digital Revolution, just as the Industrial Revolution marked the onset of the Industrial Age. The definition of what digital means (or what information means) continues to change over time as new technologies, user devices, methods of interaction with other humans and devices enter the domain of research, development and market launch.

During the Information Age, the phenomenon is that the digital industry creates a knowledge-based society surrounded by a high-tech global economy that spans over its influence on how the manufacturing throughout and the service sector operate in an efficient and convenient way. In a commercialized society, the information industry is able to allow individuals to explore their personalized needs, therefore simplifying the procedure of making decisions for transactions and significantly lowering costs for both the producers and buyers. This is accepted overwhelmingly by participants throughout the entire economic activities for efficacy purposes, and new economic incentives would then be indigenously encouraged, such as the knowledge economy.

The Information Age formed by capitalizing on computer microminiaturization advances. This evolution of technology in daily life and social organization has led to the fact that the modernization of information and communication processes has become the driving force of social evolution.

Innovations
The Information Age was enabled by technology developed in the Digital Revolution, which was itself enabled by building on the developments in the Technological Revolution.

Computers
Before the advent of electronics, mechanical computers, like the Analytical Engine in 1837, were designed to provide routine mathematical calculation and simple decision-making capabilities. Military needs during World War II drove development of the first electronic computers, based on vacuum tubes, including the Z3, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, Colossus computer, and ENIAC. IBM developed mainframes in the mid-1950s based on vacuum tubes and magnetic core memory technology for internal memory. While these massive units still used punched cards for certain input/output duties, magnetic tape quickly became the storage of choice. These units were the 700 series, were installed and used in larger organizations.

The invention of the transistor in 1947 enabled the era of mainframe computers (1950s–1970s). The first transistorized computer was Manchester's Transistor Computer in 1953. The first transistorized stored-program computer was Japan's ETL Mark III, developed from 1954 to 1956. In 1957, IBM introduced a transistorized computer, the IBM 360. These large, room-sized computers provided data calculation and manipulation that was much faster than humanly possible, but were expensive to buy and maintain, so were initially limited to a few scientific institutions, large corporations and government agencies. As transistor technology rapidly improved, the ratio of computing power to size increased dramatically, giving direct access to computers to ever smaller groups of people.

The microprocessor was introduced with the Intel 4004. It began with the "Busicom Project" as Masatoshi Shima's three-chip CPU design in 1968, before Sharp's Tadashi Sasaki conceived of a single-chip microprocessor, which he discussed with Busicom and Intel in 1968. The Intel 4004 was then developed as a single-chip microprocessor from 1969 to 1970, led by Intel's Marcian Hoff and Federico Faggin and Busicom's Masatoshi Shima. The microprocessor led to the microcomputer revolution.

Along with electronic arcade machines and home video game consoles in the 1970s, the development of personal computers like the Commodore PET and Apple II (both in 1977) gave individuals access to the computer. But data sharing between individual computers was either non-existent or largely manual, at first using punched cards and magnetic tape, and later floppy disks.