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Jan 1, 1377
East Asian Printing Press
The Jikji, an abridged Buddhist document was printed during the Goryeo Dynasty in Korea. -
Jan 1, 1440
The First Printing Revolution
Johannes Gutenburg, a German goldsmith, develops movable type, with individual pieces for each alphabetical character. The metal type is reusable, allowing easy printing of many books with the same type. -
John Locke defines knowledge
John Locke defines knowledge. He states humans have 'sense organs' which, when stimulated, produce 'ideas of sensation'. These ideas then work on our minds to produce ideas of reflection. He distinguished between different types of knowledge, and suggested that ideas come to our senses and are transformed into new ideas after we reflect on them. -
The Second Printing Revolution begins
Tolbert Lanston creates a monotype machine, which does not need type to be hand-picked and arranged beforehand. A person could type text into the machine, and it would print out a sheet with patterns which a second machine would decode to print out text. -
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The Second Printing Revolution
The Second Printing Revolution consisted of three inventions that came within years of each other. -
Second Printing Revolution
Ottomar Mergenthaler invents a one-operator linotype machine that fuses character types into a single line of lead. This allows for faster and more legible type, and the lead could later be melted down and reused. -
The Second Printing Revolution ends
The first linotype machine prints the New York Tribune.
Frederick Ives reproduces photograph in print by using black and white tiles to create a mosaic that, when viewed, appears as a continuous image. -
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The Third Printing Revolution
The 1960s see the third printing revolution, where photo-typesetting processes create type by exposing film to photosensitive paper. -
Fritz Matchlup describes 'Knowledge Industry'
In 'The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States' Fritz Machlup defines knowledge as a commodity and tries measuring its importance within an economy.
He categorised knowledge in five groups; practical, intellectual, pastime, religious and unwanted. -
Michael Polyani explains 'tacit knowledge'
Michael Polyani, a chemist turned philosopher publishes his essays on 'tacit knowledge'. He says tacit knowledge is a type of knowledge with so much 'embedded learning' that it is impossible to describe, and its rules impossible to explain. -
Marshall McLuhan foresees a networked world
Marshall McLuhan sees the world as changing into an entirely connected and networked whole. He believed technology would shape people rather than people shape technology, which is a 'technologically determinist' view. -
Peter Drucker predicts 'knowledge workers'
Peter Drucker predicted changes in society due to information. He believed information would be the main resource worldwide, and that the largest working group would be 'knowledge workers'. These knowledge workers would have high levels of formal education, and would be thought of as assets rather than liabilities. He also saw companies' infrastructures as becoming network-like, rather then a hierarchy. -
Daniel Bell puts forward idea of 'information age'
Daniel Bell, a well-known sociologist, puts forward the concept of a post-industrial society, or information age, in his work 'The Coming of Post-Industrial Society'. He suggested we predict how society could change to prepare for those changes. -
Daniel Bell expands his previous ideas
Daniel Bell adds to his concept of post-industrial society. He renames his concept as 'information society' and describes how society will move from manufacturing goods to reproducing knowledge and information, as information is costly to produce but cheap to reproduce. -
Alvin Toffler's 'Third Wave'
Alvin Toffler's work, 'The Third Wave' theorised that humanity had been through three revolutionary waves that changed society. The first wave was the agricultural society, the second the industrial society, and the third was information society. -
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The Fourth Printing Revolution
The Fourth Printing Revolution came about with the creation of digital printing, which makes any desktop computer a printing press. -
Hypercard
Apple computer brings Hypercard, an application that deals with hypertext, to the public. The Hypercard would later inspire the creation of HTTP and JavaScript. -
Megatrends
John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene publish 'Megatrends', which examines the ten changes that would shape the industrial society into an information society -
McLuhan revises his earlier theories
Marshall McLuhan reviews his previous works and establishes four laws to help analyse culture and media. -
Megatrends 2000
Naisbitt and Aburdene publish a second book which includes a revised list of changes that would affect society. -
The Internet
The 'Conseil Europenne pour la Recherche Nuclaire' team create a protocol based on hypertext and large-scale networking of hyperlinks, which is the basis for the internet. -
Community of Practice
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger put forward the concept of 'Community of Practice'. They suggest knowledge can develop through social communities with similar interests and ideas, while innovation consists of interaction between different communities. -
The Knowledge Spiral
Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuk publish 'The Knowledge Creating Company', which puts forward the concept of a 'spiral process' of knowledge creation. They suggest knowledge is based on a spiralling movement between tacit and explicit knowledge. -
Intellectual Capital
Karl-Erik Sveiby works on concept that compares a company's book value with its market value, with the difference between the two being the firm's intellectual capital. -
Twelve Themes of tthe New Economy
Don Tapscott analyses the twelve themes that differentiate the new economy from the old, which include knowledge, digital, virtual and internetworking. -
Velocity and Viscosity
Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak describe the speed and richness of knowledge's dispersal as 'Velocity and Viscosity'
