3. The rise of the Information
Age (middle to late 1900's)
A variety of far-reaching
technologies were developed for the storage, recording, and transmission
of visual images, sounds, linguistic texts, and other sorts of information.
These technologies included radio, television, motion pictures, phonograph
records, audiotapes, videotapes, cassettes, compact discs, computers,
and the Internet.
The possibility of seeing
or hearing live and recorded events and performances without being present
at the place and time at which they occur radically increased one's
access to the world. The ability to quickly access vast amounts of information
from the Internet, to move rapidly through cyberspace, and to communicate
with others from all over
the world through e-mail made one's own geographic and temporal position
much less limiting and less important.
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Ivan Soll is
a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His
Top 10 list also focuses on large-scale, far-reaching developments. He
sounds a note of caution based on rapid world population growth and technological
development, referring to our "tendency to pollute, or otherwise destroy
without using, the very resources we so desperately need."
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