ABSTRACT
The third communication revolution began as a response to military needs, such as decoding secret German messages and guiding rockets to their targets. After World War II population and markets grew in the United States and Eurasia. Business managers needed more efficient information collection, processing, storing, retrieval, and transmission methods. The principal twentieth-century innovations in communication, in chronological order, were radio, cinema, television, computers, earth satellites, and fiber-optic cables. Judging from the past, the impact of a new communication technology depends on the degree to which it is user-friendly, its affordability, and the proportion of literates in a population. For maximum business activity, the people in the market must be literate in a standardized vernacular language. If the new technology is user-friendly, affordable, and finds a large market, it will greatly facilitate other innovations. These innovations will be technological, economic, political, scientific, and literary.
