Perhaps there is no better example …
Of the power knowledge has …
To rapidly transform an economy …
Than the digital revolution.
The digital revolution transformed not just computer companies …
But also …
Television …
Cable …
Pagers …
Radio …
Newspapers …
Magazines …
Telephones …
Photography … (In 2001, U.S. consumers will likely buy more digital cameras than film cameras.)1
It did so by creating and spreading a new language …
And language is a powerful medium.
WHAT DISTINGUISHES PEOPLE FROM ANIMALS IS THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND ABSTRACT CONCEPTS AND TO COMMUNICATE THESE CONCEPTS.
The history of civilization can be summarized as a series of efforts to transmit and use increasing amounts of information.
There are many ways to do this.
Stories from grandparents …
Songs and
anthems …
Photographs …
Newspapers …
Television …
Paintings …
Books …
We get better at processing and retransmitting information.
We can see how this process occurs through the evolution of language.
When humans lived in caves …
If someone wanted to tell the group an elk had gone by, and it was time to hunt …
They would point to part of a drawing on the cave wall.
Each thought equaled a drawing.
But it was very hard to transmit abstract concepts …
Transmit a lot of information quickly …
Or standardize communication and language.
(As late as 1788, Australia’s aboriginal population had around 270 separate and distinct languages and more than 600 dialects, some highly sophisticated.)
Basic written alphabets (created with cuneiform letters and hieroglyphs) supported the first great civilizations in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Egypt.2
The Chinese stylized primitive drawings and languages into simplified characters …
Began to standardize sounds and words …
Combined them to express abstract thoughts …
And launched one of the world’s great civilizations.
(By 930, they were printing thousands of books using woodblocks.)
The Japanese call these letters Kanji …
And can communicate any abstract or technological concept through strings of characters.
“Tiger” in Chinese … from cave to present …
Although a little simpler …
This was not a purely abstract alphabet.
So to read a basic newspaper, or to type a letter, students have to memorize close to 10,000 basic characters …
And keep learning, and memorizing, throughout their lives.
The Greeks simplified all concepts into a few letters …
Which, combined in different ways, could express almost any concept …
And set the basis for the twenty-six letters we use today.
A, B, C, …
We no longer require drawings to communicate the most abstract of concepts.
And, ironically, fewer symbols led to more variety and complexity …
Japanese has around 120 possible syllables …
English has more than 1,000.
MODERN LANGUAGES ALLOW US TO COMMUNICATE A LOT OF DATA REASONABLY QUICKLY, BUT THIS IS NOT WHERE THE STORY ENDS.
In the mid-twentieth century, engineers invented a device to transmit, or not transmit, electrical impulses.
They called it a transistor …
And it led to the first computers.
Computers were stupid …
They could not comprehend or read letters, images, or music.
The only thing they could understand was a binary language …
On/off … Electric pulse/no pulse … Light/no light.
This required creating a two-letter alphabet …
To catalog, transmit, and process all human knowledge.
If an electrical impulse goes through one of the millions of transistors embedded in a computer’s microchips … the computer reads “1” …
If there is no impulse, it reads “0.”
TODAY’s DOMINANT ALPHABET NO LONGER CODES
IN TWENTY-SIX LETTERS BUT IN TWO …3
1s AND 0s
ENCODES AND TRANSMITS INFORMATION …
WITH EXTRAORDINARY SPEED AND ACCURACY …
AND IT HAS BECOME THE WORLD’S MAIN LANGUAGE.
In 1997, telephone wires, for the first time, carried more digital data than voice conversations.
By 2003, less than 3 percent of the data transmitted across telephone networks is expected to be a conversation between one person and another.4
In a digital world …
When you pick up the phone and dial …
The phone becomes a part of a digital network …
Which means your voice is no longer transmitted as sound waves …
But instead as a long string of 1s and 0s.
For example, your phone may transmit:
01001000 01101001 00100000 01101101 01101111 01101101
And the person who receives these digital strings hears …
“Hi, Mom.”
(It is actually far more complex than simply writing out these ASCII characters, because the information also has to transmit tone, volume, pauses …
But you get the general idea.)
Change a few ones and zeroes:
01000010 01111001 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101111 01101101
And you get, “Bye, Mom.”
The digital alphabet began to transmit …
Music …
Photos …
Movies …
Virtual realities.
(Music is no longer coded onto vinyl records with varying ridges read by a needle; instead we use mirror-surfaced CDs that contain only 1s and 0s.)
The speed of data transmission is getting faster and faster.
We now use fiber optics to transmit information …
If a light pulse goes through a computer it reads 1 …
If not it reads 0.
This allows information to be coded, transmitted, and decoded very quickly.
In 1999, Bell Labs scientists were able to transmit
1,600,000,000,000
bits of information (1s and 0s) … in one second … across a single fiber-optic line … no wider than one of your hairs.
In other words …
You could transmit all U.S. telephone conversations …
During the peak hour …
Of the peak day …
Across a single fiber-optic
cable …5
(Or the entire contents of the Library of Congress in about six seconds.)
When people share a common language …
Regions often come together …
So too do companies.
Two decades ago, the languages spoken at a newspaper, television studio, paging service, telephone company, recording studio, film studio … were each quite different.
Today these companies all use …
And exchange …
Digital information.
So it should shock no one …
To see that a common language …
Led to a series of mergers …
And
created
the
largest
industrial
conglomerates …
The world has ever seen.
BIRTHED AN UNPRECEDENTED BEHEMOTH …
What started close to eight decades ago as a newsmagazine, Time …
Had already gone through a series of transformations:
Merging with a large film company (Warner) in 1990 …
And with the largest cable-news operation (CNN) in 1995 …
To create the world’s most powerful media company with …
Thirty magazines and close to 120 million readers …
More than 3,000 movies …
And a cable-news operation that could reach up to one billion people.
But the largest news-entertainment gorilla …
Was eaten up by a company that was founded in 1985 …
America Online.
(At the end of 1997, Time Warner’s assets were about forty times those of AOL … But the Internet boom changed things … So did AoL’s 27 million subscribers.)
The speed and scope of technological change is such that …
AOL became twice as valuable as Time Warner …
And became the lead company …
In the world’s largest merger.
(A new company that expects to be Microsoft’s main competitor … By January 2001 AOL Time Warner controlled 33 percent of Americans’ time on the Net … Yahoo! had 7 percent … Microsoft 6 percent.)
Things change very quickly in a digital world.
Even companies …
That have more cash …
That have more information …
And that have become larger …
Than
most national economies …
Are by no means guaranteed survival …
Either they get smarter …
And grow …
Or someone will eat them up.6
TO BUILD …
AND DESTROY …
IS SUCH …
THAT IT IS LIKELY …
FEW OF US HAVE EVER HEARD …
THE NAME OF WHAT WILL BE THE WORLD’S LARGEST COMPANY …
IN 2020.
The digital revolution……………………………………….is just the beginning.
Because a new, far more powerful revolution is brewing …
One that will change most life forms on the planet …
Literally.