If we could take one person living in the year 1887 in a major city like New York or London and bring him to the year 1957, would he be more shocked than another man living in the same city in 1937 brought to the year 2007?

The man from 1887 would be very amazed at watching Television, hearing the radio, seeing so many cars on good quality roads and people travelling to far off countries by flying machines. What about the man from 1937? Would people carrying their own telephones in their pockets awe him? Would the Internet, e-mail and Google seem revolutionary to him? Would the man from 1937 be awestruck with wonder or would he be asking why we haven’t colonized other planets, found a cure for cancer or ended wars?

Are the advances in IT technology or ICT technology as it’s also called, Internet and mobile communication taken as a cluster as significant to humanity as the domestication of animals and farming and the industrial revolution? Do we understand the impact of the ongoing communication revolution around us?

Have the advances changed social structures and hierarchies, the effect of culture on individuals or the way people gather their livelihood and engage in social relations?

Have the new inventions changed the relationship between a human being and the power elite or mechanism of governance (whether it is a clan, tribe, community, city, nation state, super power or bodies like the EU)?

Five events stand out as watersheds in the history of human civilization. They are

1. The Discovery of Fire
2. The Domestication of Animals and Crops
3. The Discovery of Writing
4. The Industrial Revolution
5. The Information Revolution

The First Watershed Event in the History of Civilization

Photo source: Wikimedia Commons

It is very difficult to say exactly when humans discovered fire. The consistent and purposeful use of fire probably began with Homo erectus, who behaved more like a biped rather than an ape already 400,000 years ago.

Fire provided warmth, so crucial during the height of the glacial periods. This may have been a prime factor in human survival. Many animals, especially those in the wild, are afraid of fire. So, early man could use fire to keep the animals away, especially at night while they were sleeping.

Fire may have also played an important role in the early socialization of man. With extra hours of light available to them, they could gather around the fire, planning the next day’s hunting, telling stories and preparing tools. The entire group could come together around the fire and the abilities to communicate and socialize became important factors in an individual’s development and survival.

The Domestication of Animals and Crops

Photo source: Wikimedia commons

Domestication of animals and crops replace the hunter-gatherer way of life. The first animal known to be domesticated was the dog, about 17 000 years ago in East Asia, followed by the goat and sheep. Wheat was the first domesticated crop. Wild wheat falls to the ground to reseed itself when it is ripe, but domesticated wheat stays on the stem when it is ripe and becomes the seed for the next crop. With farming, permanent settlements arose, creating new social, cultural, religious, economic and political institutions. New social classes and hierarchies arose, symbols and systems of distribution of wealth reflected new cosmology and world-view.

Discovery of Writing

Photo source: Wikimedia commons

The Sumerians probably invented writing about 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia. Then-independently writing was discovered in India during the Indus valley civilization around 3000 BC and in China definitely by the time of the Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1700-1100 BC; and some 1,500 years later still, by the Mayas in Central America.

Writing allowed news and ideas to be carried to distant places without having to rely on a messenger or narrator’s memory. Like all great inventions, writing emerged because there was a clear need for it. In Mesopotamia, writing developed as a record-keeping mechanism for commercial transactions or administrative procedures. Texts, which served as “copy books” for the education of scribes, have also survived. Cuneiform script was used to produce some of the greatest literary works in recorded history such as the “Epic of Gilgamesh”. Though it continued as an oral tradition, the story was written down on 12 clay tablets in cuneiform script. The discovery of writing however did not change social institutions radically. The power elite everywhere strictly controlled access to reading and writing. In Europe only the Reformation and the spread of printing technology enabled people to read the bible for themselves. Earlier only priests were allowed to and could read the Bible.

Could we say that the invention of writing was the dawn of the information revolution?

Industrial Revolution

Photo source: Wikimedia commons

The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and spread to France, Germany, the United States and Japan. It was a fundamental change in the way goods were produced as also in the way people worked and lived. The pre-industrial revolution society and economy was based on manual labour and craftsman skills. The Industrial Revolution replaced these by mechanised industry and the manufacture of machinery. The use of steam powered machinery increased production capacity dramatically. Improved roads, canals and railways spread the influence of the industrial revolution. The need for labourers to live near production and trade created huge urban centres needing extensive municipal services. Social classes and hierarchies changed as people had to learn new skills. Industrial barons such as Rockefeller and Ford changed the pattern of accumulation of wealth away from land owning to owning the means of production.

Industrialization created an unprecedented specialized and interdependent economic life. The urban factory worker became completely dependent on the will of the employer than the rural worker had been. Relations between capital and labour became aggravated, and Communism was one product of this tension.

Protecting the interests of labour, capital the industrial produce of a nation demanded very different kinds of intervention from governments. The doctrine of Laissez faire or letting the unseen hand of the market as the economist Adam Smith called it, decide, gradually changed to welfare capitalism resulting in improvements in living standards and quality of life in the developed countries.

Industrialization also created imperialism. Africa, China, India, South East Asia, and South America were controlled by European nations to provide raw materials and new markets for industrialized goods. Overall colonialism or imperialism only benefited the European nations and seems to have had a negative effect on most of these cultures, and did not completely end until the mid 1950s.

Information Revolution

Photo source: Wikimedia commons

The ability of nations to produce sustained economic growth and social equality has become a measure of ascendancy or degeneration of a nation. The information revolution and associated technologies like the Internet and Mobile telephony are rewriting the development paradigm among nations. It is not only the technology of communication that is changing but also the development and utilisation of technology. This exchange of information, an unprecedented ability to move around fast and changes in our way of working is increasing the number of complex interdependent networks knitting the world closer together. Capital markets, social structures, family and marriage as institutions, religious bodies are all changing in order to adapt to new realities and face new challenges for which there is no antecedence.

Globalization and Information revolution are inseparable. The current globalization trend traces its origins to the early 1960s, when following WWII the United States reached a level of production in certain fields which was more than its domestic needs and needed markets from abroad. The first rise in multinational investment took place during the late 1960s. American multinational corporations or MNCs started building replicas of themselves in foreign countries.Since then globalization, advances in communication technology and resulting socio-political changes have transformed the nature of the modern workplace.

The paradox of the information revolution is that it is not happening where information scientists, information executives and the information industry want it to be. As Peter Drucker points out that typically information revolution is called IT revolution with the stress on the T standing for technology. But this is not just a revolution in technology, machinery, efficiency or speed like the industrial revolution was. The key to understanding it is that this is a revolution in mindsets. Drucker also points out that the information revolution is in the same phase as the industrial revolution was in 1820 or 40 years after the steam engine was applied industrially.

So far, for the last 50 years, the information revolution has centred on data-their collection, storage, transmission, analysis, and presentation. It has centred on the “T” which signifies technology in IT. The next information revolution asks, what is the MEANING of information, and what is its PURPOSE and relevance? This is leading rapidly to redefining the tasks to be done with the help of information, and with it, to redefining the institutions that do these tasks.

There is evidence of woodblock printing being used in China for paper money and books many centuries before Gutenberg in Europe. The oldest known surviving printed work is a woodblock-printed Buddhist scripture of Wu Zetian period (684~705 A.D.). In the 15th century, when printing became cheap, almost anybody with something to say and some money to afford the costs could get his/her message printed and distributed to those who could read and write. Is the Internet blogging revolution as important as the print revolution? Suddenly almost everybody has something to say and blogging enables literate people to express themselves in written language, publish their thoughts for anyone to read all over the world.

Can we say that blogging turns people away from TV and from being passive couch potato consumers of the media?

Politicians have been quick on the uptake and regularly write blogs and comment on each other’s blogs. Fundraising by using the Internet blog is also becoming common. Howard Dean in the USA raised $35 million from hundreds of thousands of people with an average donation of $80. This is very different from the standard way of fundraising by VIP dinners at1000$ a seat usually organized to support campaigns.

Modern human beings in all societies have a bottomless hunger to be noticed and not be forgotten. Some people would go to any extreme just to have a momentary claim to fame. I remember seeing somewhere a unit of this dubious claim to fame. A Warhol is a fifteen-minute unit of fame or hype (hyperbole) derived from Andy Warhol’s saying that “everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes”. Some derivatives of this unit of measurement are

• 1 kilowarhol – famous for 15,000 minutes, or about 10 days.
• 1 megawarhol – famous for 15 million minutes, or 28 years.

The crucial question here about blogging and Internet content is – who is interested?

Though a significant part of the content of blogging and the Internet seems to be of questionable nature in its importance in its capacity to better our lives or as to how we do our work and keep in touch with people we want to, their effect on the social and political institutions cannot be ignored. The real impact of the IT revolution remains to be seen. When people talk nonsense, others either tune off and concentrate on their own thoughts, go elsewhere or tell them to shut up. This is still valid for the Internet. It’s not compulsory, or is it?