reserved for such programming, many viewers mis-
took the claims of the advertisers as objective, factual
information from authoritative sources. By the end of
the 1980’s, however, infomercials had become a fix-
ture of late-night television, as their profitability to
both broadcasters and marketers increased.
Impact The proliferation of infomercials in the
1980’s altered both the manner in which products
were advertised and public perceptions of the rela-
tionships between advertising and other sources of
information. The emergence of advertising presented
as news coincided with an increased emphasis upon
entertainment and sensationalism in television news
broadcasts, rendering distinctions between fact and
fiction difficult for many viewers to understand or
maintain. Infomercials both influenced and were in-
fluenced by the national obsession with materialism
and consumerism that characterized the 1980’s.
Further Reading
Harry, Lou, and Sam Stall.As Seen on TV: Fifty Amaz-
ing Products and the Commercials That Made Them
Famous. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2002.
Head, Sidney W., et al.Broadcasting in America: A Sur-
vey of Electronic Media.9th ed. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 2001.
Michael H. Burchett
See also Advertising; Business and the economy in
the United States; Cable television; Television.
Information age
Definition Loosely delineated historical period
defined by an exponential growth in
information storage, duplication, and
transmission
During the 1980’s, there was an explosion in the use and
number of computers and other electronic information stor-
age and retrieval devices. In addition, the number of op-
tions for consumers of electronic media vastly increased. As
a result, industrial and postindustrial societies began to be
defined by the rapid proliferation of information through-
out ever y facet of contemporar y culture.
Ideas, words, and other data make up “information.”
Information, the stuff of thought and creativity, be-
comes tangible when collected, analyzed, shaped,
stored, duplicated, and transmitted. It becomes “phys-
ical” when communicated through words and num-
bers on paper (a book or street sign), through sounds
(a musical composition such as a pop song), and
through common visuals (a photograph, television
commercial, billboard, Web page). Information, then,
is human creativity that is organized, made tangi-
ble, and shared. Information is made into a “thing”
through duplication, and these “things”—databases,
e-mail, books, videos, pictures, newspapers, songs,
and such—can be transmitted and even sold, thus
marking an economy of information and an “infor-
mation age” or “information society.”
Influential Technologies A 1982 report by the U.S.
Office of Technology Assessment noted the innova-
tive technologies from the mid- to late-twentieth
century that were instrumental in shaping the infor-
mation age, which began to flourish in the early
1980’s. These innovations include cable, satellite,
digital television transmission, broadcast technol-
ogy, computers, electronic storage, video technol-
ogy, information sciences, and telecommunications.
Of these nine, the widespread advancement and use
of computers coupled with telecommunications is
often considered the major stage in the move to a
fully formed information age.
Early Roots Some historians argue that the mod-
ern roots of an information age began with engineer
Vannevar Bush and his 1945 idea for a “memex” ma-
chine, an early information-linking computer system.
Others mark the work of mathematician Norbert
Wiener on cybernetics (1948) as the point of origin.
Still others have pinpointed the awareness of an
emerging “information economy” or “knowledge
society” to a 1962 book by economist Fritz Machlup,
who documented increasing numbers of “knowledge
workers” (workers in education, health care, govern-
ment, legal services, banking, entertainment, tour-
ism, repair services, and sales) since World War II.
Media theorist Marshall McLuhan detailed the cul-
tural and social effects of a growing media and elec-
tronic communications industry, coining the phrase
“age of information” in 1964. Sociologist Daniel
Bell, in 1964, argued that society was becoming
“postindustrial,” whereby the collection, manage-
ment, manipulation, and distribution of informa-
tion—and not the production of material goods—
would be most valued in the U.S. economy. In 1969,
management theorist Peter Drucker wrote of a
“knowledge economy” and “knowledge industries.”The Eighties in America Information age 517