The information Technology Revolution
We are living in revolutionary times, a revolution brought on by dramatic advances in Information Technology.

While the steam engine and mechanization created an Industrial Revolution over 150 years ago, computers and communications equipment produced a Technology Revolution in the second half of the twentieth century. The first two decades of the twenty-first century have been characterized by a revolution in communications technology.

During the Industrial Revolution, there were three principal innovations.

Innovation One: The substitution of machines for human skill and effort.

Innovation Two: The substitution of inanimate for animal sources of power - the steam engine creating an unlimited source of energy.

Innovation Three: The substitution of new raw materials, especially minerals, for vegetable and animal substances.

Note the importance of innovation in the Industrial Revolution.

In the Technology Revolution we have seen the rapid adoption of many innovations including mainframe computers, laptops, networks, the Internet, assembly language, fourth generation languages, spreadsheet programs and other advanced software programs.

In the Technology Revolution, companies use IT as a new source of energy for processing and accessing information.

This technology helps the organization collect, store, retrieve, and apply knowledge to solve problems; IT converts the raw material of information into usable knowledge.

The Technology Revolution, like the Industrial Revolution, has changed the economy, creating new industries and ways of doing business.

Information Technology, however, extends far beyond the computational capabilities of computers.

Today computers are used extensively for communications. They are also used for their traditional roles of data storage and computation.