The Information Revolution

You know what baffles me? Busy signals. You know what I am talking about. You probably have heard one recently. I had called a few of my students a couple of months ago, and in doing so, I encountered 3 busy signals. That is baffling! At this stage of the Information age, there shouldn’t be a busy signal. Let me demonstrate…how many of us have a cell phone? A lot. How many have a computer at home? A lot. How many have an email address. Well, here, everyone. But when I asked these questions to a group of students 8 years ago, less than half had any of these. Yes, we have come a long way in the last eight years, more so than the last 250 years prior.

In the mid-1700’s, while Benjamin Franklin talked to his colleagues about lightning being a source of energy, they probably told them to fly a kite. He was shocked to discover some important properties about electricity: it existed naturally, it traveled through some materials (conductors), and it didn’t travel through other materials (insulators).

But what could be done with this electricity of his? The earliest use was to run it though metal to produce heat. Seventy-five years later, William Sturgeon wound wire around a carbon core to create the world’s first electromagnet. This was interesting, but held little intrinsic value, except for maybe a paperclip holder. But six years later, Michael Faraday demonstrated magnetic induction – the method of transferring magnetism to current and vice versa, from a distance of three feet. Based on this discovery, Joseph Henry created the world’s first telegraph device, even though it would be for a very short distance.

The following year, Samuel Morse introduced the circuit relay to Henry’s device to enable it to transmit over longer distances. What was needed was a code to transmit, which Morse promptly developed.

Thirty-two years later, Alexander Graham Bell created the first telephone, using carbon chips and an electromagnet to capture sound from one device and reproduce it at another. (This would eventually lead to the creation of American Telegraph & Telephone Company – AT&T). Say good-bye to the telegraph.

Mind you, all this time, the only light at night came from candles and lanterns. It would be another 3 years before Thomas Edison had a bright idea and invented the light-bulb.

The light bulb would not only light up a room in the dark, but shed light on a whole new science for information technology. It would be another 68 years before this new science to take hold. William Schockley would introduce the first electronic tube as a transistor. This would lead to radios, televisions, lasers, and computers. That is when the Information Revolution would begin.

In the last 20 years, we have seen more advancement in the information age than in the last 300 years! Alvin Toffler predicted this would happen in 1970 in his book “Future Shock.” He claimed that there would be "too much change in too short a period of time."

But we adapted and the Information Age evolution became the Information Age revolution. We said good-bye to the telegraph, then again to the electron tube. That is the way of any revolution. So, why then do we still have busy signals?