The Computer Revolution

¶ … Computer Revolution

The effects of the computer revolution can be felt all over the global culture, in communications, development, and in education as well as many other general and specialized areas. There are both good and seemingly bad outcomes that have been explored in specialties and in the general population, potential social isolation, technology fraud and/or crime, and many other issues come to mind, but on a more positive note any individual with a computer and an internet connection can have a conversation in real time with someone else with similar gear all the way on the other side of the world, exchanging information that can improve their life and alter their perceptions of the world. "Interactive multimedia systems promise to revolutionize education. In the future, it will be possible for people to learn anything, anytime, anywhere."

Halal, and Liebowitz 21) One of the most foundational issues associated with the computer revolution is the dynamic change in the manner that research is compiled, sought and obtained by any interested party. "Computers can handle very rapidly data that would take humans several years to process."

Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 385) the foundations of the computer revolution have created a research revolution that has completely changed the manner in which research can be done, the rate it can be done and the amount of material that can be available at any given time.

Research databases, once they have been compiled can rapidly collect more information than an individual needs about any given topic. The individual can seek information on infectious diseases, history, culture, sociology and with a discerning eye can formulate whatever desired outcomes they have within their context, within a matter of moments, as compared to the arduous manner in which research was done before computers. Some academics, calling back to the days of their own dissertations, where footnote reformatting required a completely new document, call the computer revolution amazing but at the same time question the ease at which information is gained and demand hard copy research from students, which is certainly fine as it reminds students of the origins of the word, and the value of the documents themselves. But it is not the majority, as more and more educators become engaged in the computer's uses and revolutionary abilities.

The big break came with the advent of the microcomputer in the middle of the decade. By the early 1980S the numbers of people who devoted a significant part of their professional time to computers and education had shot up from a few hundred to tens of thousands. By now it is in the hundreds of thousands, most of them teachers, although many thousands are engaged in the research and business wings of the world of educational computing.

Papert 161)

The individual can then take that information and type it into any of a number of word processing programs that allow them to format materials and reformat it without ever having to start over from the beginning. Thoughts can be put into words creatively and systematically without the challenge of formulating a concrete set of organizational tools before the work begins. Changing word order in a document is as easy as knowing how to copy and paste, moving ideas around on a virtual sheet of paper that can forever change until it is in the exact form one needs for a finished product, that hopefully expresses the ideas they gleaned from the research that took them a fraction of the time it would have in previous years. It is safe to say that the computer revolution has so dramatically changed the manner in which academics and novices work. "...the uses of information technology are diverse; as data have to be processed, and as word data are laborious to process, and as several powerful packages for data analysis and processing exist, researchers will find it useful to make full use of computing facilities.

Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 155)

The results of the computer revolution, in their entirety have yet to be fully realized but the manner in which it has changed and continues to change research is fundamental to the way it will continue to change education. Seekers of truth may find it difficult to weed through the massive amounts of information but organizing large volumes of knowledge into relatively small spaces reiterates the vastness of the world and with the right skills and training can revolutionize thought.

A according to economist Lester Thurow, we've already passed through the second industrial revolution and are into the third. In his 1999 book Building Wealth: The New Rules for Individuals, Companies and Nations, Thurow holds that the first industrial revolution was steam-powered. The second, which was electricity-powered, made possible the third, which is the information revolution, ushering in the information age.