ABSTRACT
Historians might well say that the computer has ushered in a third industrialization. Whereas the first (based on steam) and the second (built on electrical and petroleum power) revolutionized manufacturing, transportation, and communication, this third wave of technology radically transformed access to information and the operation of machines. Its impact may be as large as any earlier technological breakthrough, affecting work, play, learning, and social life in still undetermined ways. So important has the computer and its related technologies become to American life in the early twenty-first century that we must devote a chapter to it. Its evolution is marked by a number of transformations: The progressive miniaturization along with escalating power of digital technology; repeated contests over technological standards; a shift from government and business to personal applications; and a gradual move from innovations in hardware to software and computer services.
