 Home Free

courses
Subjects For
Study
For
Life
TV &
Radio

 Subjects  Society, Politics & Law

  Free courses  Information technology: A new era?
 
 1 Technological advancement

Society, Politics & Featured Free All

Law content courses content

 Course Information technology:

content A new era?
This course has now been added to
Introduction your OpenLearn Profile. There you can
track your progress and find your
Learning outcomes
statement of participation.

1 Technological 6%
advancement

2 Technological 

change and
economic growth
1 Technological advancement
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
3 Information 
(The Commissioner of the United States Office of Patents, 1899, recommending that his
technology, office be abolished, quoted in The Economist, 2000, p. 5)

productivity and
There is nothing now to be foreseen which can prevent the United States from enjoying
growth an era of business prosperity which is entirely without equal in the pages of trade history.
(Sutliff, 1901)

4 ‘Garage 
The rise of information and communication technologies (ICT) – that
tinkerers’: new
economy or is, computers, software, telecommunications and the internet – and
the large impact that these new technologies are having on the way
industry life cycle?
that society functions, have prompted many to claim that we have
5 Conclusion entered a new era, often referred to as the ‘Third Industrial
Revolution’, the ‘information age’ or the ‘new economy’. Previous
Questions for industrial revolutions were also linked to the rise of new
review and technologies: the First Industrial Revolution, concentrated in Britain
discussion from around 1760 to 1850, introduced Cort's puddling and rolling
process for making iron, Crompton's mule for spinning cotton and
Keep on learning the Watt steam engine; the Second Industrial Revolution, from
around 1890 to 1930, witnessed the development of electricity, the
References internal-combustion engine, the railway and the chemical industry.
In each of these cases, the new technologies allowed new
Acknowledgements
industries to develop and economic growth to increase.
 The concept of the ‘new economy’ is thus a claim that the
About this free

course
Home Freeof new
emergence Subjects
coursesprosperity (e.g.
the economic
For
information
Study
For (IT)TV
technology
Life
rising incomes,
was&responsible for
Radioemployment)
rising

 15 hours study decade in which personal computers (PCs) were diffused

 
experienced by most Western countries in the 1990s. This was the

throughout the economy, and the decade which saw the commercial
 Level 2: rise of the World Wide Web. The PC reached a 50 per cent
Intermediate household penetration rate in the USA only in 1999, while before
1990 the internet was used mainly by the US Defense Department,
not for commercial purposes.
 Full course
description However, as the two introductory quotations indicate, proclamations
that we have entered a ‘new’ era are not new. In fact, the advent of
electricity, the internal-combustion engine and the radio telegraph
witnessed similar proclamations about the future. They too emerged
Become an OU
during periods of prosperity; for example, electricity and the
student
automobile diffused through the economy during the prosperous
and ‘Roaring’ 1920s. So how can we tell whether we are really
entering
BA/BSc (Honours) Open a qualitatively new era or whether recent changes have
degree
simply been a quantitative extension of the past?
This course uses tools and frameworks from economics to study
this question. It focuses on the historical and theoretical relationship
BA (Honours) Social Sciences (Sociology)
between changes in technology, productivity and economic growth.
The key driving force discussed will be technological change: that
is, organisational and technical changes in the way that societies
organise
Managing in the digital production and distribution. The question is: what exactly is
economy
so new about the ‘new economy’? Some economists focus was on
the effect of new technologies and work practices on the way that
people live and work, here the focus is on the organisation and
evolution of firms and industries.
In each industrial revolution (including the current one), important
Download this
non-technological factors have influenced industry dynamics and
course
growth. Socio-political factors have been particularly prominent. For
example, the rise of industrial trade unions in the Second Industrial
Download this course for
Revolution greatly affected firm-level, industry-level and country-
use offline or for other
level growth. In this course, however, the analysis is limited to the
devices
role of technology.
We shall conduct our investigation by focusing on two related
questions, neither of which has a clear-cut answer. The goal of the
Word Kindle PDF course is to help you to think about these questions using concepts
and tools from economics.
First, after a brief overview of the concept of the industrial
Epub 2 revolution, I shall ask whether the rise of IT has significantly affected
economic growth, as new technologies did in previous eras.
See more formats 
Focusing on the effect of technology on economy-wide growth
implies that the perspective is a macroeconomic one.
Macroeconomics looks at the functioning of the economy as a
Your free whole.

courses
You have joined these

courses: Home
Information
technology:
A new era?
To view all your courses
and access statements of
participation or earned
badges, go to your
OpenLearn Profile
Course rewards 
Free
 statement of
participation
on completion
of these
courses.
Newsletter
Sign up for our regular
newsletter to get updates
about our new free
courses, interactives,
videos and topical
content on OpenLearn.
Newsletter sign-
up
Second, I shall take a more microeconomic perspective.
Free
Microeconomics Subjects
looks at the For
courseswhether they be
the economy,
Forof individual
functioning
Study
TV & elements of
Life firms,
consumers, Radioindustries or
markets. I shall ask whether the rise of new information
 
technologies has fundamentally changed the way that individual
firms and industries operate. To do this, I shall compare the patterns
that characterised the early phase of a traditional industry with those
that characterised the early phase of a relatively new industry. The
traditional industry (one that is today considered to be relatively
‘mature’, not high growth) is the US automobile industry from 1900
to 1930, while the relatively new industry is the personal computer
industry from 1975 to 2000. The similarities will lead us to ask
whether we are really in a ‘new economy’ or simply in an economy
driven, as in some past eras, by the development of new industries.
Previous Next
Learning outcomes 2 Technological change
and economic growth

Print
Take your learning further
Making the decision to study can be a big step, which is why you'll
want a trusted University. The Open University has 50 years’
experience delivering flexible learning and 170,000 students are
studying with us right now. Take a look at all Open University
courses.
If you are new to university level study, find out more about the
types of qualifications we offer, including our entry level Access
courses and Certificates.
Not ready for University study then browse over 900 free courses
on OpenLearn and sign up to our newsletter to hear about new
free courses as they are released.

Every year, thousands of students decide to
study with The Open University. With over 120
qualifications, we’ve got the right course for
you.
Request an Open University prospectus
 Home Free
courses
Subjects For
Study
For
Life
TV &
Radio
Back to
top   

©1999-2020. All rights reserved. The Open University is

incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt
charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in
Scotland (SC 038302). The Open University is authorised
and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in
relation to its secondary activity of credit broking.

Accessibility Conditions of use

Privacy and cookies Modern Slavery Act
Copyright

  
Twitter Facebook YouTube