Talk:Information Age

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Suggested merges[edit]

No consensus to merge there seems to be a lack of consensus to merge or how to proceed with any type of merge. Certain elements are individually notable, but a full merge has not been agreed upon. Valoem talk contrib 19:55, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

These pages:

are essentially content forks of this article (and Talk:Information revolution notes that some of its content actually pertains to the scientific revolution, really, but that can be fixed in the process of merging).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:40, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. — fcsuper (How's That?, That's How!) (Exclusionistic Immediatist ) — 22:56, 29 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support All 3 articles aren't very long. Ljgua124 (talk) 09:38, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose with alternative proposal: I believe there is some merging to do, but this proposes more than needed. I think the "revolution" is separate from the "age"; the revolution precedes and enables the age, while the age continues after the revolution is effectively done. There is certainly a transitional overlap period, but not 100% overlap. I propose merging just Information revolution into Digital Revolution, leaving us with the Digital Revolution and the Information Age. I believe the technical term 'digital' fits with the revolution, as that was about the enabling technology, while 'information' fits with the age, as that's how it is experienced by society beyond the tech. Also, I believe sources prefer these two terms over the alternates. --A D Monroe III (talk) 16:49, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I agree with A D Monroe III that the revolution and the age should be regarded as separate entities. Information revolution and Digital revolution have significant overlap and could easily be merged together. In short, what Monroe said.  DiscantX 00:33, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose As separate entities, Information revolution and Digital revolution would make this article page excessively long and too complex for the average reader if they were all merged. In addition, it appears the Information revolution article contains extensive original research. Lets not denigrate the current article by compounding one policy infraction with another. As a compromise my suggestion would be to add sections synopsizing and linking to the relevant article page. Leonardo da VinciTalk 23:38, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Leonardo, can you help me understand the difference between Information revolution and Digital Revolution? I can't think of any, and the current Information revolution article gives nothing. If, after removing the OR, Information rev is left as just a synopsis and link to Digital Revolution per your suggestion, I think that by definition should make it a redirect. --A D Monroe III (talk) 17:15, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, I never suggested linking a section on information revolution to an article on digital revolution. My suggestion was to create sections for both in this article, synopsizing them and linking them to their own articles. Leonardo da VinciTalk 09:58, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree on describing and linking Digital Revolution (DR) from Information Age (IA). I don't agree on describing and linking Information revolution (IR) from IA, because I can't think of anything to describe that would be different from DR. The question stands: is there any difference between IR and DR we can think of?
Further, even if we can think of some distinction between them, to avoid adding to the OR here, can we cite reliable references for that distinction? I don't see it happening. Without that, IR becomes effectively unlinkable and therefore redundant with DR. --A D Monroe III (talk) 16:11, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try to be as brief as possible. The problem I have with the IR article is not just that there are virtually no sources, but that it mentions it's early history then continues onto the present day, treating the article itself as an "Age", rather than a "revolution". A "revolution" represents a stage of progress, whereas an Age can span several revolutions. A revolution does NOT last for an Age. Therefore there is, and has been, more than one information revolution. That is probably news to some people, but it is not merely my opinion and not OR. There are sources for this. The information revolution I refer to is the primary or first one (chronologically), so I assumed we were all on the same page. If you're still not clear on what the first one was, let me elaborate -
The first information revolution began with the invention of the printing press, because mass publication made information suddenly available to everyone, in particular in libraries and schools, which gave rise to the democratization of knowledge. This was a revolution because it gave the common person access to mass information, a scenario which didn't exist before. This was 500 years ago, in contrast with the digital revolution which didn't really manifest itself until 30 years ago!
In that regard I concur with merging the 2 current IR and DR articles as one only on the basis of calling it the Digital Information Revolution, to make it distinct from the first information revolution. However this still leaves the first one unaccounted for. Therefore I propose 2 options -
Option 1
  • Leave the title of the current IR article as it is, but merge the "digital" content from that article into the current DR article.
  • Change the title of the current DR article to Digital Information Revolution to distinguish it from the early IR, at the same time acknowledging its connection to the digital revolution.
Option 2
  • Change the title of the article Information Revolution to Information Revolution (Print) and keep only the content that relates to the first information revolution.
  • Change the title of the article Digital Revolution to Information Revolution (Digital), that way we can merge most of the 2 current articles together without much of a dispute about what revolution is being referred to.
I prefer the second option as there is more consistency from a naming convention point of view. Either way the first/early IR (Print) article then would need a lot of work! I'm prepared to work on this myself if everyone here can agree to the proposed changes in principle. If, in time, the article proves to be very small in relation to the new DR article, THEN we can merge them also. I think it's worth a shot.
My apologies for the verbosity of my reply. Leonardo da VinciTalk 16:06, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I admit one can conceive of a distinction between IR and DR by including the printing press in IR. But that doesn't follow common use. We only have sources that use IR and DR to refer to the same thing, with the emphasis on the latter term. To go beyond the established sources is WP:SYNTH.
We have no sourced use of "Digital Information Revolution", and there is no sourced use of IR to mean only print. Even if we found these, they would not outweigh the more common uses; we must follow WP:COMMONNAME for the articles.
We should probably add details that extend the history of IR/DR back to the printing press, if sourced, as long as we keep an eye on WP:UNDUE. But that has nothing to do with the lack of difference between IR and DR. --A D Monroe III (talk) 15:31, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Merge Information revolution into Digital Revolution, leaving us with the Digital Revolution and the Information Age. --Inyouchuu shoku (talk) 05:59, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Merge - Let's not get hung up on the titles. The fact is we have three articles covering the same topic. There should be one. Leonardo the Florentine is welcome to create a new article covering the "first information revolution" because there is no coverage of that in the articles under consideration here. ~Kvng (talk) 16:51, 6 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate proposal[edit]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Innovation section rewrite[edit]

I've changed the Innovation section from a list to prose, per WP guides.

It's not quite chronological, since the multiple developments required for the Information Age were in parallel. I've divided the innovations into "Computers" and "Data" to help with this. (It might be good to further divide "Data" into "Storage" and "Transmission", but the list we had was lacking any storage stuff.)

I tried not to remove anything from the list, even when it made the prose a little awkward. I did add a few to help.

Really the things that were on the list to start with were less than perfect. But rather than both fix the list and convert to prose in one edit, I did just the latter, giving a chance for everyone to chime in and complain "what about...", etc.

Have fun, y'all.

--A D Monroe III (talk) 20:36, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

With no comments or notable edits months after my rewrite, I'm removing the cleanup tag for this section. It still needs improving, but is apparently no longer so bad as to merit the tag. --A D Monroe III (talk) 21:49, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Improvements[edit]

In this article, it clearly states and explains what the Information Age is in the first few lines to help the reader understand what he/she is trying to research. It clearly states the way the Information Age was formed which will allow the reader to understand how and when the era started. In the subsections, too much information is sometimes provided and it strays from the focus of the article. The article "The Information Age May Make Traditional Universities Obsolete." by Samuel L. Dunn provides a lot of information on the recent Information Age issues and addresses them with lots of studies and numbers to provide information for this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.198.5.215 (talk) 05:55, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Invention of World Wide Web[edit]

Inventor of WWW is clearly NOT American Actress Brenda Lee(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Lee>) but British computer scientist Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee>).

Celerati (talk) 11:58, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SOFIXIT. -- Rrburke (talk) 13:50, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Qualification of Information Age Description[edit]

The description of Information Age in the second paragraph which concludes, "...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.", needs some significant qualifications.

The availability of information (personalized or not) does not simplify the procedure of making decisions...

If you have just two choices, the decision of how to act is simple. If you have 100 possible choices, some of which are based on inaccurate information (deliberate or not), the decision is not simplified - it is complicated by Information Overload.

It is disingenuous to provide a description that does not address the increased complexity, stress and ability to disseminate false information that are as real, and perhaps more significant consequences, than allegedly "simplifying the procedure of making decisions" and "lowering costs". 

 R2Johnson (talk) 17:20, 22 November 2016 (UTC)Randy Johnson[reply]

Request for Cleanup of Information Age Description[edit]

Paragraphs two and three of the description are very poorly written, containing many glaring structural and grammatical errors that severely hamper readability and make it difficult to comprehend the author's precise meaning. Furthermore, they contain several unqualified and/or unsubstantiated claims which require verification. This section very likely requires a complete rewrite. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.133.37.194 (talk) 06:58, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

world's capacity to store information[edit]

Is this correct? It seems to be saying the total height of the stacks of books is 150 million km x 4500 = 675 billion km:

"It is estimated that the world's capacity to store information has reached 5 zettabytes in 2014.[8] This is the informational equivalent of 4,500 stacks of printed books from the earth to the sun." --Espoo (talk) 13:05, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Article remains amorphous because it beats around the bush[edit]

Failing to name any representative date in the 21st century is a major dodge.

From magnetic tape data storage:

Magnetic tape was first used to record computer data in 1951 on the Eckert-Mauchly UNIVAC I.

The UNISERVO drive recording medium was a thin metal strip of 0.5-inch wide nickel-plated phosphor bronze.

Recording density was 128 characters per inch (198 micrometre/character) on eight tracks at a linear speed of 100 in/s, yielding a data rate of 12,800 characters per second.

...

Making allowances for the empty space between tape blocks, the actual transfer rate was around 7,200 characters per second.

This was actually an improvement over the paper tape on the Colossus computer, but I did have to quickly check (furthermore, this was an operational tape, not a storage tape as such).

Tape, unlike disk drives (or mercury delay lines), is a magnetic storage format you can reasonably put into a briefcase and haul around.

It's as good a landmark as any until the planar process of 1959, and I think that's a bit late for this purpose anyway.

From IBM 701:

The IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine was IBM's first commercial scientific computer, which was announced to the public on April 29, 1952.

It was designed by Nathaniel Rochester and based on the IAS machine at Princeton.

The IAS was way too finicky to view as a commodity in any sense.

Late addition, from transistor computer:

The University of Manchester's experimental Transistor Computer was first operational in November 1953 and it is widely believed to be the first transistor computer to come into operation anywhere in the world.

— MaxEnt 02:03, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I tend to think of the preliminary information age as bracketed by 1890 United States Census (electrification was soon important), and the commercial, electronic information age as beginning circa 1950, as above. For balance, it would be best to frame both. — MaxEnt 02:13, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Time that Information Age started[edit]

Hello all!

I was reading this article and the late 20th century didn't seem specific enough for me.

I was hoping to narrow the time frame to a decade or decades.

Specifically, the Digital Age doesn't have its own article page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SPiZlE (talk • contribs) 19:26, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you,

SPiZlE — Preceding unsigned comment added by SPiZlE (talk • contribs) 19:23, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Request for remove Template Message on Different stage conceptualizations[edit]

@Kj cheetham: The Concept of Three stages of the Information Age has used for a research paper published on International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT). That paper has written by Dr. R. Sunitha. She is an Assistant Professor of Pondicherry University, India. This research paper is a public document published on internet and anyone can use it (https://www.ijcttjournal.org/2020/Volume-68%20Issue-2/IJCTT-V68I2P104.pdf). So we can use this document as a referrence on this section.

"...The digital age is estranged into primary and secondary minutiae. In primary digital age is focused on newspaper, radio and television and the secondary digital age dealt with the internet, satellite television and mobile phone." (extracted by that research paper) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Suroiranga (talk • contribs) 01:42, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Problems in Innovations section[edit]

I've read and checked all the sources and I have huge problems with this section. In Transistors it is said that "The beginning of the Information Age, along with the Silicon Age, has been dated back to the invention of the metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET; or MOS transistor)". In the ref [[1]] there is brief one sentence throwaway remark about Atallah. The article doesn't even mention invention of invention of transistor, Integrated circuit and microprocessor. I do not consider this article a reliable source. The article is not published in any academic journal and the author is not historian of technology. Next the claim that "The widespread adoption of MOSFETs revolutionized the electronics industry" is referenced by some engineering textbook, and again it's one throwaway remark. Similarly "The MOS transistor has been the fundamental building block of digital electronics since the late 20th century, paving the way for the digital age" is referenced to youtube video. Unless someone can point out where does it say so, I am gonna remove it. Besides extraordinarily claim requires extraordinarily sources. The same problem is with "The MOSFET revolutionized the world during the Information Age, with its high density enabling a computer to exist on a few small IC chips rather than filling a room". Again one sentence remark in Appendix to "Extreme Environment Electronics".

In Data section, it is said that "In 1967, Dawon Kahng and Simon Sze at Bell Labs developed the floating-gate MOSFET (FGMOS), which they proposed could be used for erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM),[56] providing the basis for non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies such as flash memory". The source [[2]] says that "Dawon Kahng and Simon Sze of Bell Labs described in 1967 how the floating gate of an MOS semiconductor device could be used for the cell of a reprogrammable ROM", nothing about developing it. I also can't verify that it provide the basis for flash memory. In fact Advances in Non-volatile Memory and Storage Technology says nothing about FGMOS, at least I couldn't find anything. This is imho original research.

The claim that "The wireless revolution, the introduction and proliferation of wireless networking, began in the 1990s and was enabled by the wide adoption of MOSFET-based RF power amplifiers (power MOSFET and LDMOS) and RF circuits (RF CMOS)" is also failed verification. RF and Microwave Passive and Active Technologies book does not say that wireless revolution was enabled by MOSFET. the source [[3]] says nothing about CMOS or LDMOS. Again this is original research.

Finally the claim that "Discrete cosine transform (DCT) coding, a data compression technique first proposed by Nasir Ahmed in 1972,[66] enabled practical digital media transmission" and other stuff that followed. This is referenced by [[4]], [[5]] and [[6]]. Neither of the source says that DCT enable practical digital transmission, in fact third source doesn't even mentioned DCT! The whole claim is just complete flight of fantasy.

In optics section the article says that "while working at Tohoku University, Japanese engineer Jun-ichi Nishizawa proposed fiber-optic communication, the use of optical fibers for optical communication, in 1963.[78] Nishizawa invented other technologies that contributed to the development of optical fiber communications, such as the graded-index optical fiber as a channel for transmitting light from semiconductor lasers." the ref [[7]] is extremely short polemical article by unknown author, claiming that "the greatest invention of 20 century originated in Sendai". This is not reliable source. I similarly can't find anything in "New Medal Honors Japanese Microelectrics Industry Leader" article.

And the claim that "Izuo Hayashi's invention of the continuous wave semiconductor laser in 1970 led directly to the light sources in fiber-optic communication, laser printers, barcode readers, and optical disc drives, commercialized by Japanese entrepreneurs,[82] and opening up the field of optical communications.[75]". It references Bob Johnstone book, but I can't verify it. If somebody can, please go ahead, oherwise I will remove it. The second source [[8]] on page 10 says that "By far the biggest impact of the laser on Bell Laboratories, however, has been in opening up the field of optical communications. In 1968, I. Hayashi and M. B. Panish succeeded in making a double-heterostructure GaAs laser that operated continuously at room temperature with a reasonable life expectancy. This advance, along with advances in optical fiber technology, have made possible practical lightwave systems that will clearly play a very important part in the communications networks of the future". It DOES NOT says that it open up the field of optical communications. In fact it never says that Hayashi invented this laser!

I am gonna do significant cleanup of these sections DMKR2005 (talk) 18:03, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

COI template removed[edit]

COI template removed. Because that concept has mentioned on various sources. The Concept of Three stages of the Information Age has used for a research paper published on International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT). That paper has written by Dr. R. Sunitha. She is an Assistant Professor of Pondicherry University, India. This research paper is a public document published on internet and anyone can use it (https://www.ijcttjournal.org/2020/Volume-68%20Issue-2/IJCTT-V68I2P104.pdf). So we can use this document as a referrence on this section.

"...The digital age is estranged into primary and secondary minutiae. In primary digital age is focused on newspaper, radio and television and the secondary digital age dealt with the internet, satellite television and mobile phone." (extracted by that research paper) - Suroiranga (talk) 05:44, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unreliable Sources on the Three Stages of Information Age[edit]

The sources under the section "three stages of information age" is either original research or questionable material. The only source is cited as Iranga, S., who appears in no research journals and no citations except his one book. Also, it seems that he is the editor of this section. If that is the case, this qualifies as self-promotion.

We need to properly vet this section with many reliable sources.

Added a research article as a reference for this section. Suroiranga (talk) 15:29, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lead image[edit]

I think the lead image should be changed or reworked, its contrast is all over the place. Some color correction and a better font should make it much more easier to read. Also, the idea of using a tree trunk is neat, but maybe a more simplistic timeline like the one used in the Life article would be better. NicoSkater97 (talk) 02:17, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Americanization[edit]

d information on the cultural dominance of the western world, especially the US, and add expanded section on prevailance of internet use per different country. DizzyDawn (talk) 01:19, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Television and the news[edit]

These two things are essential to understanding the Information Age and its consequences, and I think more sources about them are needed to elaborate. GoutComplex (talk) 13:32, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What is information Age[edit]

what is information Age 14.1.64.66 (talk) 14:12, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

yes 14.1.64.66 (talk) 14:12, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@ 103.42.216.138 (talk) 04:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Merge from Digital Revolution and Information revolution[edit]

I concur with those who said it on relevant discussion pages that those are effectively the same topics. Merge here seems best as it is the most popular name (~1.5m hits in GScholar, the other two terms get only about 1/10th of that). Those terms are generally used as synonyms.

From [9]: "The 3IR is variously known as the ‘digital revolution’, the ‘information age’ and the ‘network society’. " 3IR means Third industrial revolution, the term redirects to digital revolution. (network society has a seperate article and I don't think it should be merged here). Frankly, very few sources discuss those terms in any way that suggests that they are not synonymous (there are, of course, more terms called synonymous too).

Consider also the content of our articles - there is a lot of expected duplication. Tables of Contents:

  • Infomation Age: "Overview of early developments | Different stage conceptualizations | Economics | Innovations | Economy, society and culture"
  • Digital Revolution: "History | Rise in digital technology use of computers | Converted technologies | Technological basis | Socio-economic impact | Concerns | Implications"
  • Information Revolution: "Information in social and economic activities | The theory of information revolution | Measuring and modeling the information revolution"


Ping participants of past merge discussion from 2015, closed as 'no consensus' above (@SMcCandlish, Fcsuper, Ljgua124, A D Monroe III, A D Monroe III, Leonardo the Florentine, and Inyouchuu shoku:, and I'll note that that discussion had a pretty clear consensus IMHO to at least merge the two 'revolution' articles into one. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:50, 18 October 2023 (UTC) @Kvng and DASonnenfeld: (ping fix) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:22, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, as someone who was thick in the middle of technology policy analysis during the rise of this period. These are all different terms for or lenses on the same thing. To the extent any really sourceable distinctions could be drawn between them, they could be covered in short sections. And the coining of each related term should be sourced and included, much the way various related terms are covered at Tartanry (which is topically totally unrelated, but something else for which various terms have been coined).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:54, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Challenging but possible, by the same way what End time (former featured article was merged into Eschatology). I would also create new redirect Smartphone revolution there. Dawid2009 (talk)
  • Support. If there is a major distinction, such as Digital Revolution being a subset of Information Age, it's lost on me. Their lede sections similarly describe socioeconomic and cultural changes with the adoption of information technologies, whether digital or a precursor. There should be a section that includes etymology to describe any major differences in framing, but the basis is the same. czar 03:22, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I redirected the pages to the Information Age page. Interstellarity (talk) 00:45, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Interstellarity Thank you. Does it mean you are closing this discussion? I do think we have a consensus for merge, but note that redirecting is not the same as merging... I'll try to find time to merge stuff but it may take a while - if anyone has time to do it earlier, please help. @SMcCandlish @Czar @Dawid2009 Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 00:55, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeesh, that could be a big job.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:22, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Interstellarity We are still waiting to hear from you. This discussion has not been formally closed with proper close hats and summary, nor has any merge occurred. At minimum, please close this properly, and then if you don't want to merge those pages, please restore them and tag them with {{Being merged}} and {{Merging from}} Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:00, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus I reverted my edits and tagged the pages. Interstellarity (talk) 01:49, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Interstellarity Thank you. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:50, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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