Money, minds, and hands

Everyone or nearly everyone knows the meaning of the term Information Revolution. The word "information" invokes images of computers and microchips. The word "revolution" suggests changes, drastic changes in both a political and sociological sense. Changes in the way we actually think, work, and play.
Most people will agree that this revolution began when personal computers became personal in terms of price, size, and power. Others might extend its life to the 1950’s when the solid state era of electronics was born. According to the general view, the Information Revolution started no more than 30 or 40 years ago, and it was due to a remarkable technological break-through in the electronic arena.
From the linguistic point of view, Information Revolution is a phrase, or slogan, borrowed from the term "Industrial Revolution" which was developed by Arnold Toynbee to describe economic, demographic, social, and political changes that took place initially in England between the mid 18th and the first quarter of the 19^th century. During this period there was a shift from an agricultural to an industrial stage of development as a result of technological innovations.
The "futurologists" duo James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg, in their bestseller "The Great Reckoning", claim that "the Information Revolution, much rumored but little understood, is the third great revolution of the human life…". Certainly, there is no doubt that it is much rumored and very little understood. Precisely because it is rumored it is little understood. On the other hand, whether it is the third, the fourth, or the tenth great revolution of human life depends on Davidson & Rees-Mogg’s definition of a great revolution, human life, and the arbitrary point where they began counting.
The Industrial Revolution was "triggered" by a relatively sudden appearance of technical inventions which, within a few years, changed the world. The outcome of this Revolution was inevitable and unpredictable to their contemporaries since the causes were "natural", like an earthquake or an epidemic. When Richard Arkwright built the first cotton-spinning mill in 1771 which was operated by using unskilled workers (10 year old children) in a way that today we call "mass production", he probably didn’t foresee, apart from the obvious personal and immediate economic advantages, the scale and scope of his invention in terms of political and social consequences. Around the same time James Watt built the first "crankshaft" steam machine, adding a new "piece" to the Industrial Revolution puzzle.
The fact that Watt had problems finding financial support to produce his invention, in contrast with Arkwright who made a fortune in a short period of time, proves that during the Industrial Revolution its components where taking their place without any order or plan. Everyone was attempting to maximize the material or intellectual benefits of the revolution, but all had a partial – non systemic – view of the process. Peasants abandoned farms to work in factories, not knowing if this would result an improvement in their quality of life. Inventors struggled to find financial support not knowing the long term social consequences of their inventions. "Entrepreneurs", probably the better foreseers of the time, envisaged huge short-term profits. No one, however, foresaw the most important consequences of the process. This revolution was like a natural phenomenon driven by "natural" forces unknown to the people of the time. Science and technology where mature enough to cradle the inventions, and the powerful pull of offer and demand, the social equivalent to gravity, amalgamated the disperse pieces of the puzzle. The universal craving for textile products was the force that mobilized money, minds, and hands into what we currently call the Industrial Revolution like an ever-hungry black hole craves for matter and even light.

As we can see, the concept of Industrial Revolution has an illustrious father – A. Toynbee - but the Information Revolution has not. It started as a rumor. Nevertheless, the media adopted and inflated this phrase around the world establishing a "de facto" relationship between the concepts. The problem, or the advantage, depending on your point of view, of launching this new concept with a rumor is that it establishes an a priori relationship between the Information and the Industrial Revolution, thereby saving you the burden of analyzing and proving that both processes are really similar or analogous. I am not going to resort to the same trick of choosing a convenient name in order to spare myself from the task of having to demonstrate my assertions. I accept the weapons and field chosen to prove that the Information Revolution has, essentially, little in common with the Industrial Revolution and the development of information technology. I’ll demonstrate that there are other revolutions, besides the Industrial Revolution, that constitute better analogies in terms of genesis and outcomes, social, and political consequences, that the media’s innocent slip of associating both revolutions on the base that they are mechanical and inevitable is not so innocent, and that the Information Revolution is a planned one, it has clear aims and predictable consequences that become evident analyzed under the light of Systems Theory.