The way society handled the introduction of microprocessors is a classic example of this first stage. Now, young people entering the labor force have some form of information device - from calculators to computer games to high- tech gadgets and drives.The second stage is being used to improved what we already have. Computers are improving what exists.
We have ready information about anything leading to the third stage of invention and applications that are imagined now.This book is an extension of a highly controversial and ahead of its time MIT thesis by the same author. This book is not for the non-intellectual, and he gets pretty thick into the details and philosophy of parallel computing. Some inventions are simply a better way of doing or building something.
They may improve an existing technology. Other inventions are much more complicated.Today's technology has been in the process of development for thousands of years. New inventions are constantly changing how people work and play. Businesses often have telephones, fax machines, and computers. Graphic designers use desktop publishing programs to create books and magazines.Doctors frequently use medical technology.
They use it to treat injuries, illnesses, and diseases such as cancer. Pilots fly airplanes and helicopters.An invention is the new technology created. An inventor with a new idea or design for an invention may decide to have the idea protected. The idea gets protection from the law in a paper called a patent. A patent prevents other people from making, using, or selling the new idea without permission from the inventor.Some inventions are simply a better way of doing or building something.
They observe how things work and develop ideas about ways to make them work better. Sometimes they try to test an idea to explain how something works. Scientists perform experiments to find out how things work. The knowledge that they discover is useful for many things. It can help to build new machines. It can help scientists to develop new medicines or cure a disease. They change how people think and live. The future constantly brings us even more changes.
This will happen as we continue to learn about the world.This book was written well before massive Internet use, just as the computer technology in Silicon Valley was really taking off. Indeed, this is one of those books which was the prime mover of the time.This is why I have it in my library, and why I recommend it to anyone who is into artificial intelligence, computer hardware, future software, or where we are go from here; why you ask - because if the past is any indication of the future, things are getting get pretty interesting in the next decade.
In fact, I hope you will please consider this, and educate yourself a little in the past, so you can understand how far we've come, how fast we've come, and where we go from here. Think on it.The potential microprocessors are awesome. The automation of factories and offices, once a futuristic pipe dream, is a reality. It is now a wonder, that computers have inspired fear and mystery in workers ever since their powers were first uncovered.
Finally, the transition from an industrial to an information society does not mean manufacturing will cease to exist or become unimportant. Did farming end with the industrial era? Information is as necessary to General Motors as to IBM. In an information age, the focus of manufacturing will shift from the physical to more intellectual functions on which the physical depends.Information is an economic entity because it costs something to produce and because people are willing to pay for it.
Indeed, to survive in an information society, where computers and keyboards are tricks of the trade - we have to become friends with the computer and become computer literate. The whole orientation of computers is getting to expand the brainpower through growth, education, and learning the new information-electronics economy.
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