9781422283318

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nyone living in about 3500 bce , after the Bronze Age had arrived in some parts of the world, might have witnessed what was then the height of technology: the first wheel. During the Industrial Age, which began in the mid- 18th century, cutting-edge technologies included the steam engine and the machine-powered tex- tile loom. The phrase “high-tech” obviously has different meanings depending on the historical period in question. The basic definition of technology, howev- er, remains the same: anything invented by humans—tools, materials, or processes— that makes life easier or solves problems. We’re now said to be in the midst of the Infor- mation Age, sometimes called the Computer Age or the Digital Age. Many modern historians assert that the Information Age had its genesis back in the late 1940s, when mathematician and engi- neer Claude E. Shannon published a revolutionary paper proposing that all

We are living in a time when the world is at our fingertips, whether on computers . . .

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Black Achievement in Science: Technology