This week we read chapter 1 in Manuel Castells’ 1996 book, “The Rise of Network Society.” It’s titled “The Information Technology Revolution.” My thoughts… I actually find the history of technology to be rather interesting. The evolution, a rather fast evolution, is due to so many factors that came together in an almost perfect storm. Might the revolution of computers come a little faster? Perhaps. Equally possible, is that any set of changes could have delayed the onset of this very blog by decades. Still, I found this reading a little dry in places. There is a lot of content and the places where I was most engrossed were the ones that tried to put the happenings into context.
I agree with Castells that it is not just one thing that brought on this technological revolution. We can not simply point to the Cold War as the reason that computers were so important. The term revolution is key here, because as innovation grew, more people were drawn into its web (pun intended) as part of said revolution. One piece of technology inspired another piece of technology and so on until we have where we are at today. The revolution is indeed an evolution of technology and that is thanks to economic factors, idealism, the military, the open source nature of the technology that made it exciting for people with years of experience and with relatively little experience to want to do something, try something.
I never thought of the parallels with bio technology, specifically with the human genome. It shows the importance of the openness of the technology. When everyone has access, it breeds greater opportunity for others to get involved and push things forward.
Alina Learns to Code 