The ‘Information Revolution’ in the Current Depression

No one would deny that one of the most conspicuous features of the current great depression in the capitalist world from the early 1970s is the process of major change in information technologies. This process, together with its impact on various aspects of our economic life, is referred to as the ‘information revolution’. Its main technological basis is the development of micro-electronics (ME), using more and more sophisticated silicon integrated circuits (IC). An IC silicon chip smaller than one square centimetre in 1960 contained semi-conductor functions equivalent only to ten transistors. By 1976, its function had grown to an equivalent of 64 thousand transistors, and to around a million at the current time.1 The cost per bit of ICs went down to less than one-thousandth of its 1965 value in the following fifteen years, and it has continued to fall. Much reduction in both the size and costs of computers has thus been realised, and has enabled the extension of computer technology to a wide range of information processing.