Digital technology and social change: the digital transformation of society from ahistorical perspective

摘要

Digital technology, including its omnipresent connectedness and its powerfulartificial intelligence, is the most recent long wave of humanity’s socioeconomicevolution. The first technological revolutions go all the way back to the Stone, Bronze,and Iron Ages, when the transformation of material was the driving force in theSchumpeterian process of creative destruction. A second metaparadigm of societalmodernization was dedicated to the transformation of energy (aka the “industrialrevolutions”), including water, steam, electric, and combustion power. The currentmetaparadigm focuses on the transformation of information. Less than 1% of theworld's technologically stored information was in digital format in the late 1980s,surpassing more than 99% by 2012. Every 2.5 to 3 years, humanity is able to store moreinformation than since the beginning of civilization. The current age focuses onalgorithms that automate the conversion of data into actionable knowledge. This articlereviews the underlying theoretical framework and some accompanying data from theperspective of innovation theory.