Re: what is the technological revolution?

Dear Yunus,

You asked, "What is the technological revolution?" This is a very broad question, with lots of different answers. Since your question was directed as the computer sciences section of MadSci Network, I'll try to answer it broadly from that point of view. But you should remember that the subject is much broader than computers -- a revolution is also underway in many other technical areas such as medicine, biology, and materials. If I don't answer it in a way that meets your needs, please e- mail me with some clarification of what it is you need, and I'll see what I can do...

"The technological revolution" is the phrase mostly used in the popular media to refer to the apparently sudden appearance of computing and communication as a part of normal, everyday life in the industrialized countries. In these countries ordinary people regularly bump into and rely upon computers that communicate with each other in the course of going about their business. Often, these computers are part of everyday objects. They don't look like computers and people don't think of them as computers -- they are things like ATMs or bus ticket machines or doors in office buildings or even drinks dispensing machines. Only fifteen or twenty years ago that was not generally true. Then, computers generally looked like computers and didn't talk to each other nearly as much as they do today. And people generally didn't bump into them -- at least not directly in their everyday lives.

The media likes to call what's happening a revolution because, like the Industrial Revolution that preceded it, the Technological Revolution is fundamentally and relatively quickly changing the way people live, and is doing so in ways that are difficult to foresee just by looking at the technology involved. (For example, the Industrial Revolution caused big shifts in the structure of society (like urbanization) that no one predicted. Similarly today, people can see that the Technological Revolution is changing the way commerce is carried out but no one is really sure exactly how that will reshape society.) The Technological Revolution is analogous to the Industrial Revolution in other ways, too -- particularly in that it didn't really happen in a few weeks or months the way political revolutions do.

From the point of view of those working in the field (me, for instance), the revolution doesn't feel like a revolution at all but rather a whole series of small changes, inventions, and improvements,  starting long before I came along, that have accumulated over many years. In the field of communications, I point back to the development of the telegraph in the middle of the 19th century while for computing to the early pioneers such as Charles Babbage and his difference engine. Since then -- with lots of fits and starts, lots of hard work, and lots of really interesting invention -- we've moved forward at an ever increasing rate until suddenly, from a point of view outside the field, we have a revolution!