trialized, and instead simply leapfrog the industrial phase to achieve a state of post-industrial modernity.
In order to understand this apparent contradiction, we must clarify what we mean by "industrial." In much popular usage, this word retains somewhat the flavor of the mid-20th century. It connotes steel mills, railroads, and auto plants -- more broadly, "machines" in the sense of big, noisy contraptions with lots of moving parts -- but not computers or cell phones, much less a computer software program. However, a moment's reflection makes it clear that a computer is as much a machine as a steam locomotive is, and producing one is equally an industrial process. They are simply less noisy, and their moving parts are often invisible electrons rather than gears and camshafts. A computer program is also a type of machine, though a "virtual" one, implemented by another machine, the computer running it. Indeed, the term "software," though originating in the computer industry and still generally associated with computer programs, can be and is used more broadly for the non-physical structures, such as organizational structures, of industrial operations in general (Luken and Friej 2).
The perception of living in a post-industrial world has also been encouraged by the decline, in countries such as the United States, in industrial manufacturing employment. This is partly because of the same perception as above; we don't think of software engineers as industrial workers. In addition, automation has eliminated many traditional manufacturing jobs, while economic globalization has moved many more "offshore." However, automation is itself an industrial process, while globalization is primarily a consequence of industrial development. An economy does not become less industrialized because it has fewer factory workers;
More broadly, much of industrial technology is as much concepts and procedures as physical gadgets. To t...