The Information Age
Electronics + computing = “information technology”
Technologies crucial for manipulating large amounts of information in electronic formats
- Hardware: Semiconductors, optoelectronics, high performance computing and networking, satellites and terrestrial wireless communications devices;
- Software: Computer programs, software engineering, software agents;
- Hardware-Software Combination: Speech and vision recognition, compression technologies;
Information industries: assemble, distribute, and process information in a wide range of media, e.g., telephone, cable, print, and electronic media companies
$3 trillion world wide industry within ten years