How did we came to the information age?

Paper was invented by the Chinese by 105 AD during the Han Dynasty and spread slowly to the west via Samarkand and Baghdad. Papermaking and manufacturing in Europe started in the Iberian Peninsula, today's Portugal and Spain and Sicily in the 10th century by the Muslims living there at the time, and slowly spread to Italy and South France reaching Germany by 1400

The Tudor period usually refers to the period between 1485 and 1603, specifically in relation to the history of England and Wales. This coincides with the rule of the Tudor dynasty in England whose first monarch was Henry VII (1457 – 1509). In terms of the entire century, Guy (1988) argues that "England was economically healthier, more expansive, and more optimistic under the Tudors" than at any time in a thousand years.[1]

Phases of modernity

According to one of Marshall Berman's books (Berman 1982, 16–17), modernity is periodized into three conventional phases (dubbed "Early," "Classical," and "Late," respectively, by Peter Osborne (1992, 25):
Early modernity: 1500–1789 (or 1453–1789 in traditional historiography)
Classical modernity: 1789–1900 (corresponding to the long 19th century (1789–1914) in Hobsbawm's scheme)
Late modernity: 1900–1989
Some authors, such as Lyotard and Baudrillard, believe that modernity ended in the mid- or late-20th century and thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity, namely

The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment or Age of Reason) was a cultural movement of intellectuals in the 17th and 18th centuries, first in Europe and later in the American colonies. Its purpose was to reform society using reason, challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith, and advance knowledge through the scientific method. It promoted science, skepticism and intellectual interchange and opposed superstition,[1] intolerance and some abuses by church and state.

The Industrial Revolution was a period from 1750 to 1850 where changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times. It began in Great Britain, then subsequently spread throughout Western Europe, North America, Japan, and eventually the rest of the world.

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is widely credited with building the first full-scale, self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769; he created a steam-powered tricycle.[12] He also constructed two steam tractors for the French Army, one of which is preserved in the French National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts.[13] His inventions were however handicapped by problems with water supply and maintaining steam pressure.[13] In 1801, Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil road locomotive, believed by many to be the first demonstration of a steam-powered road vehicle. It was unable to maintain sufficient steam pressure for long periods, and was of little practical use.

The French Revolution (French: Révolution française; 1789–1799)

The Wright brothers flights in 1903 are recognized by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics, as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight".[14] By 1905, the Wright Flyer III was capable of fully controllable, stable flight for substantial periods.

The Cold War, often dated from 1945–1991, was a sustained state of political and military tension between powers in the Western world, dominated by the United States with NATO and other allies; versus powers in the Eastern world, dominated by the Soviet Union with its Warsaw Pact and other allies. The Soviet Union held satellite states especially in the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe as well as in Asia.[1]

The astronauts planned placement of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiment Package (EASEP)[23] and the U.S. flag by studying their landing site through Eagle's twin triangular windows, which gave them a 60° field of view. Preparation required longer than the two hours scheduled. Armstrong initially had some difficulties squeezing through the hatch with his Portable Life Support System (PLSS). According to veteran moon-walker John Young, a redesign of the LM to incorporate a smaller hatch had not been followed by a redesign of the PLSS backpack, so some of the highest heart rates recorded from Apollo astronauts occurred during LM egress and ingress.[24][25]

Aldrin bootprint; part of an experiment to test the properties of the lunar regolith
At 02:39 UTC on Monday July 21, 1969, Armstrong opened the hatch, and at 02:51 UTC began his descent to the lunar surface.

In 1972, Unix was rewritten in the C programming language, contrary to the general notion at the time "that something as complex as an operating system, which must deal with time-critical events, had to be written exclusively in assembly language".[11] The migration from assembly language to the higher-level language C resulted in much more portable software, requiring only a relatively small amount of machine-dependent code to be replaced when porting Unix to other computing platforms.

The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January, 1975, issue of Popular Electronics, and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold thousands in the first month.[1] The Altair also appealed to individuals and businesses that just wanted a computer and purchased the assembled version.[2] Today the Altair is widely recognized as the spark that led to the microcomputer revolution of the next few years:

January – The world's first personal all-in-one computer (keyboard/screen/tape storage), the Commodore PET, is demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago

On August 12, 1981, IBM released the IBM Personal Computer.[6] The IBM PC used the then-new Intel 8088 processor. Like other 16-bit CPUs, it could access up to 1 megabyte of RAM, but it used an 8-bit-wide data bus to memory and peripherals. This design allowed use of the large, readily available, and relatively inexpensive family of 8-bit-compatible support chips. IBM decided to use the Intel 8088 after first considering the Motorola 68000 and the Intel i8086, because the other two were considered to be too powerful for their needs.[7][8] IBM's reputation in business computing, combined with a rapid marketplace of third-party peripherals and the later introduction of IBM PC compatibles from other vendors, allowed the IBM PC architecture to take a substantial market share of business applications.[9]

October 4 – The Free Software Foundation is founded in Massachusetts, USA.

Postmodernity (1930s/1950s/1990s–present). Other theorists, however, regard the period from the late 20th century to the present as merely another phase of modernity; Bauman calls this phase "Liquid" modernity, Giddens labels it "High" modernity (see descriptions of postmodernity).

The knowledge economy is also seen as the latest stage of development in global economic restructuring. Thus far, the developed world has transitioned from an agricultural economy (pre-Industrial Age, largely the agrarian sector) to industrial economy (with the Industrial Age, largely the manufacturing sector) to post-industrial/mass production economy (mid-1900s, largely the service sector) to knowledge economy (late 1900s – 2000s, largely the technology/human capital sector). This latest stage has been marked by the upheavals in technological innovations and the globally competitive need for innovation with new products and processes that develop from the research community (i.e., R&D factors, universities, labs, educational institutes).

In December 1974, RFC 675 – Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program, by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine, used the term internet, as a shorthand for internetworking; later RFCs repeat this use, so the word started out as an adjective rather than the noun it is today.[16] Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) developed the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized and the concept of a world-wide network of fully interconnected TCP/IP networks called the Internet was introduced.
TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States from research and education organizations, first at 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s.[17] Commercial internet service providers (ISPs) began to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. The Internet was commercialized in 1995 when NSFNET was decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic

Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.[13] Sanger coined the name Wikipedia,[14] which is a portmanteau of wiki (a type of collaborative website, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick")[15] and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's departure from the expert-driven style of encyclopedia building and the presence of a large body of unacademic content have received extensive attention in print media. In 2006, Time magazine recognized Wikipedia's participation in the rapid growth of online collaboration and interaction by millions of people around the world, in addition to YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook.[16] Wikipedia has also been praised as a news source due to articles related to breaking news often being rapidly updated.[17][18][19]

Facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc.[5] As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users,[6] more than half of them using Facebook on a mobile device.[7] Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends".

Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".
It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July