New Era of Technology

You should be able to do the following after reading this Blog:

• Appreciate the pervasive impact that new technologies can have on the economy and, in particular, productivity; comprehend how industry dynamics can be analyzed using the “industrial life cycle model.
• Use data and historical examples to support economic arguments.
• Comprehend the relationship between technological change and the industrial revolutions.
  The ascent of data and correspondence innovations (ICT) – that is, PCs, programming, broadcast communications, and the web – and the huge effect that these new advancements are having on the way that society capabilities have provoked numerous to guarantee that we have entered another period, frequently alluded to as the ‘Third Modern Upset’, the ‘data age’ or the ‘new economy’. New technologies were also linked to previous industrial revolutions:
  The Watt steam engine, Cort’s puddling and rolling process for making iron, Crompton’s mule for spinning cotton, and the Puddling and Rolling process for making iron were all introduced during the First Industrial Revolution, which took place in Britain from about 1760 to 1850. Electricity, the internal-combustion engine, the railway, and the chemical industry all emerged during the Second Industrial Revolution, which lasted from around 1890 to 1930. In every one of these cases, the new advancements permitted new ventures to create and financial development to increment.

The idea of the ‘new economy’ is consequently a case that the rise of new data innovation (IT) was liable for the financial flourishing (for example rising livelihoods, rising business) experienced by most Western nations during the 1990s. These were the decades when personal computers (laptops) became ubiquitous throughout the economy and the decade when the Internet saw business flourish. Personal computer home penetration in the United States did not reach 50%, he said, until 1999. Prior to 1990, the Internet was primarily used by the United States Guard and was rarely used for business purposes.

But as his two opening quotes show, the claim that we have entered a “new” era is not new. In fact, similar predictions were made in the days of electricity, wireless telegraphy, and internal combustion engines. They were also born in times of prosperity. For example, during the prosperous “golden” 1920s, automobiles and electricity spread throughout the economy. So how can we tell if we are truly subjectively entering a new era, or if recent changes are essentially quantitative extensions of the past?