Talking about the information revolution.
The first time: the use of language
The second time: coinage
The third time: the invention of printing
The fourth time: the invention and popularization of telegraph, telephone, radio and television.
The fifth time: the popularization of computer application, the combination of computer and modern communication technology.
Looking back on the past thousands of years, the progress of human society largely depends on the construction of infrastructure. Houses, roads, irrigation and water conservancy, factories and so on are all indispensable foundations for the development of human society. If our future generations look back on the 20th century, they will definitely pay attention to the construction of the information superhighway, a global infrastructure.
Information superhighway is a high-speed multimedia transmission system, which can transmit multimedia information with rich audio-visual images and culture in the world or even in a larger scope. The "information superhighway" first proposed by the United States refers to a digital large-capacity optical fiber communication network, which is used to connect computers of government agencies, enterprises, universities, scientific research institutions and families. Some countries and companies have also put forward the idea of using satellites to build an "air information superhighway".
1at the beginning of 993, the new president of the United States put forward the plan of building the "information superhighway" shortly after he took office, and authorized the establishment of the "information infrastructure task force", which was composed of Minister of Commerce Ron Brown, Vice President Gore, Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers Laura Tai Sen, and a group of economic, legal and technical experts and representatives of the telecommunications industry. The core members of the working group meet at the White House every week to discuss.
The US government's "information superhighway" policy is based on five principles: first, encourage private enterprises to increase investment; Second, promote and protect competition among private enterprises; Third, the public can get services; Fourth, avoid the phenomenon of "inequality between the rich and the poor" in information ownership; Fifth, keep the flexibility of technical design.
Half a year later, the Japanese government also decided to establish a national ultra-high-speed information network. 1994 February 16, Council of Europe announced that it would build its own "information superhighway". Singapore's "information superhighway" plan has also been completed. These conditions show that the second information revolution has begun.
Since the advent of computers in the mid-1940s, the first information revolution in the world has had an unprecedented impact on human society, and the information industry came into being. By the early 1990s, the workload of computers in the United States was equivalent to that of 400 billion people in a year. In developed countries, industries based on information technology account for more than half of GDP. When countries all over the world proposed to build the information superhighway, there were 400 million computers and 654.38+0 billion telephones in the world (beginning with 654.38+0.994), but the global information transmission was still not smooth. The "information superhighway" that the United States plans to build in 10- 15 refers to a digital large-capacity optical fiber communication network connecting computers of government agencies, enterprises, universities, scientific research institutions and families. In the 1990s, it took 13 hours to transmit 33 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica through the computer network, while it only took 4.7 seconds to use the "information superhighway".
The second information revolution triggered by the "information superhighway" is characterized by networking and multimedia. The "information superhighway" can transmit data, images, sounds and other information, and its service scope includes education, health, entertainment, commerce, finance and scientific research. It will take the form of two-way communication.
In today's economic competition, whoever grasps the information and turns it into an economic advantage will win. Alvin toffler, a famous American futurist, pointed out in his book Power Transfer that the rise of wealth creation system based on information is the most important thing in contemporary economy, and knowledge has become the most important factor in military and economy. Japan's National Institute of Science and Technology Policy predicts that human knowledge will increase from 20 1 1 to 10 in 2020, an increase of 3-4 times. American futurist19941-February pointed out that by 2 1 10, the application scope of information technology will involve 90% of the labor force, which will greatly promote economic development and change people's life and work style.
However, the second information revolution may also widen the gap between the North and the South, and developing countries are in a more disadvantageous position due to the lack of information technology, capital and talents. Therefore, we should attach great importance to the second information revolution, step up training talents and strive to catch up. Developed countries should implement preferential policies to help developing countries meet the arrival of the second information revolution.
In the era of information revolution, the role of information has undergone a qualitative change.
Peter drucker, a master of world management thought, pointed out in his latest book "Management Challenges in the 2 1 Century" that now we are experiencing an information revolution. This is not a revolution in technology, mechanical equipment, software or speed, but a revolution in ideas. In the past 50 years, information technology focused on data collection, storage, transmission and printing, with emphasis on "technology", while the new information revolution focused on "information".
In the past, useful data for enterprises were mainly used to calculate costs, and accounting system was established to provide cost information and control costs. But now the success of enterprises depends on the value and wealth created, which requires risky decisions: relying on business philosophy, business strategy, abandoning old innovations, achieving short-term profits and gaining a balance of market share, and so on. This kind of strategic decision-making is really needed by senior leaders of enterprises. But the data provided by the traditional accounting system can't provide these at all. So the requirement for information technology now is not to acquire more data, technology and speed. What is needed now is a new concept of information. A new and most important field is how to organize information outside the enterprise. These information are unrelated and provided by different sources, but they have two things in common, that is, they provide information rather than data, and they are the information that senior leaders need for high-level decision-making.
The fundamental goal of an enterprise is to create wealth. In order to create wealth, enterprises need four kinds of information: basic information, productivity information, quality information and resource allocation information. But this information only tells us the current situation of the enterprise, and it is used to guide the "strategy". As for the information needed by the "strategy", it should include: market, customers and non-customers, technology in this industry and other industries, world finance, changing international economic order, etc.
Information is not only a kind of knowledge, but also can guide us to take correct actions. People who produce data generally don't know what kind of data users need to turn it into information. Only individual knowledge workers, especially individual enterprises, will turn data into information and organize these information to take effective actions.
Ten trends of information revolution
The' 99 Fortune Global Forum Annual Meeting, which came to an end not long ago, left us not only the real investment of multinational companies in China, but also the description of the future world revealed by their words and deeds, as well as the aura of successful history reflected by their intelligence contest, showing us the ten major trends of information technology revolution in the world today.
Trend 1: Eat fast and slow. Being in a local outbreak stage and occupying a leading position in local markets (especially in the United States and Europe) will help to become a global market standardization maker. The key to success is to change from the traditional mode of "eating big and eating small" to "eating fast and eating slowly".
Trend 2: The earth becomes the sky. Due to the cross-border nature of information technology itself, traditional geo-economy, geo-culture, geo-military and geo-politics are giving way to modern network economy, network culture, network military and network politics. ...
Trend 3: the west is integrated into the east. Because the information technology revolution will once again divide the world's wealth in three dimensions, the western hemisphere economic circle, as the birthplace of the technological revolution, has increasingly penetrated into the eastern hemisphere economic circle, while the countries in the eastern hemisphere have upgraded their industrial structure with the help of the information revolution to get rid of being a "colony" for a new round of global network enclosure war in the next century, and they are also actively introducing advanced western technologies in desperation.
Trend 4: Smart becomes stupid. Since the information technology revolution has expanded from a single information technology industry to a cross-industry revolution, more and more smart people have continuously introduced fool-version information technology products to face ordinary people hundreds of times more than technology users.
Trend 5: Narrowness and width. The e-commerce revolution triggered by the information technology revolution has put forward huge market demand for the global information infrastructure to move towards the transmission channel of end users. Whether in the telecommunications infrastructure layer, access service layer or business application layer, the wider the bandwidth, the wider the bandwidth has become an important factor in winning the competition.
Trend 6: divide and rule. Because the information technology revolution can connect manufacturers and end users anytime and anywhere. The traditional distribution agency system is being impacted by the direct selling interactive system.
Trend 7: Let the old give up. Since innovation is the soul of the information technology revolution, entrepreneurs with old ideas in the past, who will eventually return to the past, will give way to innovative and energetic new enterprises and young heroes (1999, among the 40 richest young people in the United States, more than 95% come from information technology, and the poorest of them has reached as much as 200 million dollars).
Trend 8: Closed and open. When the trend of global information technology revolution spreads to China and other developing countries, it is necessary to properly handle the relationship between equality and inequality between technology leading countries and technology receiving countries, as well as the realistic relationship between different political systems in the East and the West and the widening gap between the rich and the poor in the North and the South. Sound information technology policies are very important to developing countries, and it may be wise to make rules before opening up.
Trend 9: Drink high and drink low. As a result of this information technology revolution, the political and military conflicts between the East and the West are unbalanced, the gap between the North and the South is widening, and the global industry will be divided again. High-tech exploitation and low-tech exploitation are triggering a war without smoke.
Trend 10: technology becomes trade. Information technology revolution from military to scientific research, from education to commerce, in 2003, the global e-commerce trade volume between enterprises alone will exceed 1 trillion dollars. The "network-building right" war in the new century has begun, with the information technology revolution as the inducement, global electronic trade as the form and the commanding heights of global wealth in the new century as the essence.
Speaking of this, you can see that the world scientific and technological revolution has promoted economic development at the same time, which is of great help to the development of material civilization. At first, after riding in horse-drawn carriages, sailing boats and the industrial revolution, trains and steamboats ... had a great influence. I suggest you refer to the scientific and technological revolution