The Information Age Goes Public At the beginning
of the 1980’s, the public became increasingly aware
of how computers were to be a growing part of
daily life. Microprocessors, which made computers
smaller, faster, and less expensive, had been installed
in computers in the mid-1970’s, allowing nonpro-
fessionals to use equipment once reserved for a com-
puter elite. Microcomputers were first introduced to
mainstream consumers in 1976 with the Apple I. In
1981, International Business Machines (IBM) came
out with the IBM PC, which it sold through Sears
stores. In 1983 and 1984, Apple made computing
even more user-friendly by introducing the hand-
held “mouse.” Information could now be more eas-
ily gathered, stored, duplicated, and shared, and
once the Internet was made available to academics
and other researchers in the mid-1980’s, that infor-
mation—in the form of words, numbers, graphics,
and such—proliferated.
In the 1980’s, computers became more common-
place not only in banks, libraries, offices, and retail
establishments but also in factories and auto repair
shops and at gas stations and construction sites.
“Home information systems” became popular, as
American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and
Bell Telephone began offering consumers an early
form of e-mail in 1980. Libraries offered coin-oper-
ated microcomputers to their patrons, and auto-
mated teller machines (ATMs) were installed in
banks. U.S. government information gathering, as
well as privacy rights, became major concerns in
1982, when about 500,000 men who did not register
for the draft were traced through Social Security files
scoured by government computers.
Best-selling authors and futurists Alvin Toffler
(The Third Wave, 1980) and John Naisbitt (Mega-
trends, 1982) brought to a general reading audience
a discussion of the emerging information age, argu-
ing that the 1980’s would usher in a new era defined
by an increased flow of information and knowledge.
In 1986, AT&T announced, “Like it or not, informa-
tion has finally surpassed material goods as our basic
resource.” The information age, cultural critic The-
odore Roszak wrote in 1986, was marked by an econ-
omy that was “mass manufacturing information.”
Critics who did not believe the Western world was in
the throes of an information age countered that in-
dustry and manufacturing were not diminishing in
light of an information revolution. Instead, they ar-
gued, industrial capitalism was simply changing form,
that most knowledge and information workers com-
prised a routine, and hardly new, mass-producing
workforce of clerks, typists, salespersons, and techni-
cal support staff. This workforce, the so-called knowl-
edge workforce, made up a newly defined category
of workers.Impact The 1980’s was a significant decade for the
information age. By this time, the information age
was considered unstoppable and pervasive. It would
not be long before information technology—and
the glut of information itself—became an accepted
part of everyday life. Also, pundits argued that infor-
mation was the key to global economic survival for
the United States, with some naming the age an “in-
formation revolution.”Subsequent Events By 1989, the information
age would evolve radically, as researchers, namely
computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, developed a
“browser” to easily retrieve information from com-
puters. A browser contained “links” to information
behind text and ushered in the earliest stages of the
World Wide Web, another stage that introduced the
public to information on an even grander scale.
Within a few years, the Internet—and the Web—
were accessed by a public even hungrier for informa-
tion, and the information age was in full swing. In
the 1990’s and the first years of the twenty-first cen-
tury, information was everywhere, and everyone had
to have it.Further Reading
Capurro, Rafael, and Birger Hjorland. “The Con-
cept of Information.”Annual Review of Information
Science and Technology37 (2003): 343-411. Details
the histories of the terms “information” and “tech-
nology.”
Castells, Manuel.The Rise of the Network Society.2ded.
Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000. Considered a clas-
sic in its discussion of the information age. Highly
recommended, especially for advanced readers.
Mattelart, Armand.The Information Society: An Intro-
duction. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2003. A
brief but recommended introduction to the in-
formation age.
Webster, Frank.Theories of the Information Society.3d
ed. New York: Routledge, 2006. An excellent ex-
amination of ideas about the information society.
Desiree Dreeuws518 Information age The Eighties in America