Editing Information Age (section)

==Different stage conceptualizations==
{{More citations needed|section|date=February 2024}}
During rare times in human history, there have been periods of innovation that have transformed human life. The [[Neolithic|Neolithic Age]], the Scientific Age and the [[Industrial Age]] all, ultimately, induced discontinuous and irreversible changes in the economic, social and cultural elements of the daily life of most people. Traditionally, these epochs have taken place over hundreds, or in the case of the Neolithic Revolution, thousands of years, whereas the Information Age swept to all parts of the globe in just a few years, as a result of the rapidly advancing speed of information exchange.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago during the Neolithic period, humans began to domesticate animals, began to farm grains and to replace stone tools with ones made of metal. These innovations allowed nomadic hunter-gatherers to settle down. Villages formed along the [[Yangtze|Yangtze River]] in China in 6,500 B.C., the [[Nile|Nile River]] region of Africa and in [[Mesopotamia]] ([[Iraq]]) in 6,000 B.C. Cities emerged between 6,000 B.C. and 3,500 B.C. The development of written communication ([[cuneiform]] in [[Sumer]]ia and [[hieroglyph]]s in [[Egypt]] in 3,500 B.C. and writing in Egypt in 2,560 B.C. and in [[Minoa]] and China around 1,450 B.C.) enabled ideas to be preserved for extended periods to spread extensively. In all, Neolithic developments, augmented by writing as an information tool, laid the groundwork for the advent of civilization.

The Scientific Age began in the period between [[Galileo Galilei|Galileo]]'s 1543 proof that the planets orbit the Sun and [[Isaac Newton|Newton]]'s publication of the laws of motion and gravity in ''[[Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica|Principia]]'' in 1697. This age of discovery continued through the 18th century, accelerated by widespread use of the [[Printing press|moveable type printing press]] by [[Johannes Gutenberg]].

The Industrial Age began in Great Britain in 1760 and continued into the mid-19th century. The invention of machines such as the mechanical textile weaver by Edmund Cartwrite, the rotating shaft [[steam engine]] by [[James Watt]] and the [[cotton gin]] by [[Eli Whitney]], along with processes for mass manufacturing, came to serve the needs of a growing global population. The Industrial Age harnessed steam and waterpower to reduce the dependence on animal and human physical labor as the primary means of production. Thus, the core of the Industrial Revolution was the generation and distribution of energy from coal and water to produce steam and, later in the 20th century, electricity.

The Information Age also requires electricity to power the [[global network]]s of computers that process and store data. However, what dramatically accelerated the pace of The Information Age's adoption, as compared to previous ones, was the speed by which knowledge could be transferred and pervaded the entire human family in a few short decades. This acceleration came about with the adoptions of a new form of power. Beginning in 1972, engineers devised ways to harness light to convey data through [[Fiber-optic cable|fiber optic cable.]] Today, light-based [[optical networking]] systems at the heart of telecom networks and the Internet span the globe and carry most of the information traffic to and from users and data storage systems.

[[File:Three stages of the Information Age.png|thumb|Three stages of the Information Age]]There are different conceptualizations of the Information Age. Some focus on the evolution of information over the ages, distinguishing between the Primary Information Age and the Secondary Information Age. Information in the Primary Information Age was handled by newspapers, radio and television. The Secondary Information Age was developed by the Internet, satellite televisions and [[mobile phones]]. The Tertiary Information Age was emerged by media of the Primary Information Age interconnected with media of the Secondary Information Age as presently experienced.<ref>{{Cite book|title= Social Media Culture|last= Iranga|first= Suroshana |date= 2016|publisher= S. Godage and Brothers|isbn= 978-9553067432|location= Colombo}}</ref><ref>Di Giambattista, C. (2021). Presentare il futuro nella Digital Age. La convergenza semiotica tra arte e IxD design nella pratica del Future Casting [Zenodo]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6627276</ref><ref>Jillianne Code, Rachel Ralph, Kieran Forde et al. ''A Disorienting Dilemma: Teaching and Learning in Technology Education During a Time of Crisis'', 14 September 2021, preprint (Version 1). https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-899835/v1</ref><ref>Goodarzi, M., Fahimifar, A., Shakeri Daryani, E. (2021). "New Media and Ideology: A Critical Perspective". ''Journal of Cyberspace Studies'', 5(2), 137–162. https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/77017/ssoar-jcss-2021-2-goodarzi_et_al-New_Media_and_Ideology_a.pdf</ref><ref>Wang, Xuan & Yang, Zhihui. (2022). Research on the Youth Group's Expectations for the Future Development of self-Media while in the Digital Economy. Frontiers in Business, Economics and Management. 3. 43–48. https://doi.org/10.54097/fbem.v3i3.315.</ref><ref>Dr. R. Sunitha (2020). Impact of Digital Humanities And Literary Study In Electronic Era International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology, 68(2),22–24. https://ijcttjournal.org/helium/ijctt/ijctt-v68i2p104</ref>

[[File:LongWavesThreeParadigms.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Stages of development expressed as Kondratiev waves]]
Others classify it in terms of the well-established [[Schumpeter]]ian [[long waves]] or [[Kondratiev waves]]. Here authors distinguish three different long-term meta[[paradigm]]s, each with different long waves. The first focused on the transformation of material, including [[Stone Age|stone]], [[Bronze Age|bronze]], and [[Iron Age|iron]]. The second, often referred to as [[Industrial Revolution]], was dedicated to the transformation of energy, including [[hydropower|water]], [[steam engine|steam]], [[electric power|electric]], and [[Internal combustion engine|combustion power]]. Finally, the most recent metaparadigm aims at transforming information. It started out with the proliferation of communication and [[data storage|stored data]] and has now entered the age of [[algorithms]], which aims at creating automated processes to convert the existing information into actionable knowledge.<ref>Hilbert, M. (2020). "Digital technology and social change: The digital transformation of society from a historical perspective". ''Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience'', 22(2), 189–194. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2020.22.2/mhilbert</ref>