9781422280744

accessed with site addresses or hyperlinks on the Internet—was being used by corporations to create home pages where they could place text and graphics to sell products. Soon, a person could purchase anything, including airline tickets, cars, and DVDs by going online—connecting to the Internet—and browsing websites from their home computer. College students and professors alike could use the Internet to conduct research. Electronic mail, or e-mail, accessed the Internet to send and receive messages, connecting people from around the world and vastly increasing the rate of commerce. One early problem faced by Internet users was speed because phone lines could only transmit a limited amount of information at a time. The development of fiber-optic cables allowed for mass amounts of information to be sent every second. Companies like Intel also developed faster microprocessors, so personal computers could process the

SIDEBAR

SHIFTING FROM THE INDUSTRIAL TO DIGITAL AGE The inventions used to perform tasks changed dramatically when we moved from the Industrial to Digital Age. Here are some examples: • Vinyl records gave way to CDs, then MP3s, and now streaming audio. • VHS tapes shied to DVDs and Blu-rays, and now, streaming video. • Landline phones were replaced by cell phones. • Dial-up Internet upgraded to high- speed-digital cable. • The typewriter gave way to the computer. • Mail evolved to the facsimile, then e-mail. • Film photography transitioned to digital photography

incoming signals at a more rapid rate. This enabled cable television to go digital, expanding the number of channels available to customers. By 1999, almost every country had an online connection, and more than half of the US population used the Internet on a regular basis. THE DIGITAL WORLD IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND In the 2000s, digital technology spread from the developed to the developing world and from the home to wherever an individual happened to be. As the Digital Revolution spread, mobile phones became more common than landline phones, the number of Internet users continued to grow, and TV started to transition from analog to digital signals. Text messaging grew into a common form of communication, and high-definition television (HDTV) became a standard broadcasting format in many countries. The first smartphone—a mobile phone with the operating system of a personal

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