ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a brief review of the changes in information technologies and their uses since The Communications Revolution was written in 1980–81. It highlights several areas of change that are especially visible such as telephony, electronic leisure, personal computing, and electronic publishing, and offers some generalized social-psychological implications that have resulted from those changes. The chapter reviews several areas of change that are especially visible as the United States approaches a midpoint in a decade that was supposed to introduce the information age. Whatever future the telephone business was to have in the United States was to be a function of the outcome of a long-running antitrust suit pressed by the government against AT&T. Videogame arcades and home videogames were among the nation’s faster-growing businesses. The videogame business has been dramatic in its near collapse. The small-business market also beckoned, as the six-digit prices of most minicomputers were out of reach.