But the information age really has not arrived yet. Rather what we have experience over the past three or four decades is the emergence of silicon system technology (SST) that is enabling all sorts of computations to be done surprisingly efficiently. The technology is associated with Moore's Law ... Moore being a key figure in the history of Intel, one of the big developers of silicon system technology. Moore's Law is that the technology doubles in power and halves in cost every 18 months ... and over a very short time this makes the technology potentially incredibly useful.

Up to now the use of SST for the good of society has been more accidental than anything else. Clearly SST has been deployed as fast as it could be in advanced military applications ... most of which are very secret. On the other hand SST has been used in society as a whole to improve profit but no much to improve society directly.

And as to knowledge or the information age ... the use of SST to handle data, information and knowledge is very much in its infancy.