The Industrial Revolution, in case it’s been a while since you last thought about it, took place across different parts of the world between 1760 and 1840. It saw large swathes of the world take on new manufacturing technologies and entirely transformed the socio-political economic landscape.
The impact it had can’t be overstated, but there has also been an ongoing revolution that is reshaping many of the same avenues of human development, the Information Revolution. But what exactly is the Information Revolution and how does it compare to the Industrial Revolution?
The trickiest aspect of understanding what the Information Revolution is, is that it is still ongoing, and we don’t really have a firm idea of how it is going to play out. What we can say though, is that it describes a current and ongoing body of trends across politics, economics and society in general.
Information has always been important to human development. But the Information Revolution has seen an unprecedented boom in the amount of information we all have access to, and the ways that we use it.
The Industrial Revolution was a turning point in human history. For many historians and economists, it marks the most significant body of developments in human history since the emergence of agriculture.
The Industrial Revolution saw manufacturing technology and techniques transform the way the modern world operated. New materials, tools and processes spurred on unprecedented economic developments and drastically altered the way that we live and work.
Rather than comparing the two as though they were entirely unrelated, it might be more useful to look at how they have informed each other. Just like the Industrial Revolution, the Information Revolution has transformed our lives and our work.
The easiest change to spot is the level of specialisation that the average role requires. The Industrial Revolution created modern industry as we understand it today. The Information Revolution has pushed individuals to become highly specialised in how they contribute to bigger industrial efforts.
Take a look at any job board, or poke around on LinkedIn and you’ll see what we’re talking about. Most workers, in most industries, have something markedly specific listed as their line of work. We aren’t generalist workers anymore, and this has come about as a result of the intersection of the Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution.
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