The Rise of IT to World Power

The exponentially accelerating expansion of IT into all areas of economy, politics, and society since the 1970s is largely due to the fact that it has successively outgrown its world of mainframe computers. Thus, it became not only affordable but also practical and manageable for the broad masses of the population and companies of all sizes. Companies like Atari, Commodore, IBM, Apple, and Microsoft, which produced increasingly smaller, ultimately miniaturized computers and established a new culture in the industry, are exemplary of this process. This led away from the gray-haired gentlemen in dark suits and lengthy decision-making processes in large corporations to young female and male entrepreneurs, equipped with plenty of inventiveness, willingness to take risks, and corresponding venture capital. With this and the emergence of the Internet in America and the invention of the World Wide Web at CERN in Switzerland, a global IT infrastructure emerged, which has changed everything as a “world computer” and made IT a dominant factor in the economy, politics, and social life.