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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
THE LAST TWO DECADES HAVE SEEN AN UNPRECEDENTED ‘convergence’ of technological developments in computing, telecommunications and the mass media, an event now referred to collectively as ‘the communications revolution’. At the heart of this revolution lies a Kondratievian cluster of technologies: specifically, the silicon microchip, which has facilitated an increase of several orders of magnitude in information storage and processing capabilities; and advanced telephonic, cable and satellite technologies, which have, again by orders of magnitude, expanded the capacity to transmit information instantaneously. A particular result of the economics of satellite communication is that the costs of accessing data bases and information services have become increasingly unaffected by distance and independent of location. The communications revolution has facilitated development of a world-wide system of computerized financial transactions and has also greatly accelerated globalization of the operations of transnational enterprises engaged in manufacturing, resource exploitation and business service.
1 Nikolai Kondratieff was a Russian economist who, writing in the 1920s, identified half-century-long cycles or waves of economic development. Joseph Schumpeter popularized the concept of Kondratiev cycles in the West. Both emphasised the importance of new technologies.
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