The Industrial Revolution is generally regarded as ushering in the forces of modern technology รป technologies as diverse as the steam engine, the cotton gin, the reaper, vulcanized rubber, and many more (Taylor, p. 3). When engineers consider technology, however, it is important to recognize that such simple technological tools as the wheel and the lever and the pulley were in common, everyday use for hundreds and thousands of years before the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s. Over the course of the past 100 years, as Timothy Taylor (p. 3) has commented, man has employed various mechanized technologies to subjugate nature's forces to man, and to develop machinery, chemistry and chemical processes, navigation and flight, agriculture and all forms of manufacturing by means of which raw materials are turned into finished products, and to identify and exploit various energy resources. As a direct result of these technological advances, a global economic order was created which supported essentially capitalist growth and development. As Taylor (p. 4) suggests, the new "Information Technology Revolution" which has emerged stands ready to again redefine economic life, production, and the nature of that which is produced.
Stephen Ambrose (p. S26) states that the past century has been one in which technological change is more rapid than ever before. While the people who lived during the first half of the 19th century also experienced dramatic changes in their home and work lives due to technologies such as those listed above, the new information technologies are reducing the barriers between disparate peoples and distant regions to virtual nothingness. If the telegraph made communication between people at great distances almost instantaneous, the Internet and e-mail allow it to occur in real time, simultaneously from two or more points and places. Given the rate at which new applications of electronic technologies dr...