Digital Revolution

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A university computer lab containing many desktop PCs

The Digital Revolution, also called the Third Industrial Revolution, is the change from analog, mechanical, and electronic technology to digital technology which began anywhere from the late 1950s to the late 1970s with the adoption and proliferation of digital computers and digital record keeping that continues to the present day.[1] Implicitly, the term also refers to the sweeping changes brought about by digital computing and communication technology during (and after) the latter half of the 20th century. Analogous to the Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution marked the beginning of the Information Age.


The trends of technological revolutions[edit]


Then the Industrial Revolution lead to industrial cities in the 19th century such as Manchester, Newcastle Upon Tyne and New York City. In the 20th century the rise of the service economy caused people to leave the industrial cities and move out into the suburbs.


Rise in digital technology use, 1980–2010[edit]


  • Cell phone subscribers: 11.2 million [2]
  • Internet users: All Internet users at this time were indexed in a phone book sized directory.


  • Cell phone subscribers: 12.4 million (0.25% of world population in 1990)[3]
  • Internet users: 2.8 million (0.05% of world population in 1990)[4]


  • Cell phone subscribers: 1.2 billion (19% of world population in 2002)[4]
  • Internet users: 631 million (11% of world population in 2002)[4]


  • Cell phone subscribers: 4 billion (67% of world population in 2010)[5]
  • Internet users: 1.8 billion (26.6% of world population in 2010)[6]

Brief history[edit]


A major landmark in the revolution was the transition from analog to digital recorded music. In the 1980s, the digital format of optical compact discs supplanted analog formats, such as vinyl records and cassette tapes, as the popular medium of choice.[8]


Origins (1947–1969)[edit]

In 1947 the transistor was invented,[9] leading the way to more advanced digital computers. In the 1950s and 1960s the military, governments and other organizations had computer systems.


The Whole Earth movement of the 1960s led to the inspiration and eventual creation of the World Wide Web.[10]

The 1970s[edit]

The 1970s saw the introduction of the home computer,[1] time-sharing computers,[2] the video game console, the first coin-op video games,[11][12] and the subsequent golden age of arcade video games. As digital technology proliferated, and the switch from analog to digital record keeping became the new standard in business, a relatively new job description was popularized, the data entry clerk. Culled from the ranks of secretaries and typists from earlier decades, the data entry clerk's job was to convert analog data (customer records, invoices, etc.) into digital data.

The 1980s[edit]


In 1984 the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting data on computer and Internet use in the United States; their first survey showed that 8.2% of all U.S. households owned a personal computer in 1984, and that households with children under the age of 18 were nearly twice as likely to own one at 15.3% (middle and upper middle class households were the most likely to own one, at 22.9%).[14] By 1989 15% of all U.S. households owned a computer, and nearly 30% of households with children under the age of 18 owned one.[15] By the late 1980s, many businesses were dependent on computers and digital technology.

Motorola created the first mobile phone, Motorola DynaTac in 1983. However, this device used analog communication - digital cell phones were not sold commercially until 1991 when the 2G network started to be opened in Finland to accommodate the unexpected demand for cell phones that was becoming apparent in the late 1980s.

The first true digital camera was created in 1988, and the first were marketed in December 1989 in Japan and in 1990 in the United States.[16] By the mid-2000s, they would eclipse traditional film in popularity.


The 1990s[edit]

Tim Berners-Lee designed the World Wide Web, first brainstorming the general concept in March 1989 and writing the code and server in the last months of 1990. The first public digital HDTV broadcast was of the 1990 World Cup that June; it was played in 10 theaters in Spain and Italy. However HDTV did not become a standard until the mid-2000s outside of Japan.

The World Wide Web became publicly accessible in 1991, previously available only to government and universities.[17] In 1993 Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina introduced Mosaic, the first web browser capable of displaying inline images[18] and the basis for later browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. The Internet expanded quickly, and by 1996, it was part of mainstream consciousness and many businesses listed websites in their ads. By 1999 almost every country had a connection, and nearly half of Americans and people in several other countries used the Internet on a regular basis. However throughout the 1990s, most connections were slow dial-up and the present day mass Internet culture was not possible.

In 1989 about 15% of all households in the United States owned a personal computer, by 2000, this was up to 51%;[19] for households with children nearly 30% owned a computer in 1989, and in 2000 more than 75% owned one.

The 2000s[edit]




In late 2005 the population of the Internet reached 1 billion,[20] and 3 billion people worldwide used cell phones by the end of the decade. HDTV became the standard television broadcasting format in many countries by the end of the decade.

The 2010s[edit]

The widespread use and interconnectedness of mobile networked devices and mobile telephony, internet websites and resources, and social networking have become a de facto standard in digital communication.[citation needed] By 2012, over 2 billion people used the Internet, twice the number using it in 2007. Cloud computing had entered the mainstream by the early 2010s. By 2015, tablet computers and smartphones are expected to exceed personal computers in Internet usage.[21]

Converted technologies[edit]

Technological basis[edit]


Socio-economic impact[edit]







Information sharing and privacy[edit]





Copyright and trademark issues[edit]






These problems are further compounded by the use of digital rights management and other copy prevention technologies which, being designed to only allow the data to be read on specific machines, may well make future data recovery impossible. Interestingly, the Voyager Golden Record, which is intended to be read by an intelligent extraterrestrial (perhaps a suitable parallel to a human from the distant future), is recorded in analog rather than digital format specifically for easy interpretation and analysis.

See also[edit]


  1. ^ a b The Digital Revolution. UCSD.
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  8. ^ "The Digital Revolution Ahead for the Audio Industry," Business Week. New York, March 16, 1981, p. 40D.
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