Electronic Industrial Age vs. Information Age

According to Larson, the success of the Industrial Age can be
fundamentally characterized by the effective organization of
repetitive sequences (Larson, 1989).  Because many electronic
technologies have embodied the mechanization of repetitive,
sequential data management processes which seldom lead to new
knowledge, it can be argued that word processors, spreadsheets,
and DBMS programs are products of an Electronic Industrial Age.  

The telecommunications and computer revolution that has
characterized the Electronic Industrial Age has created an
overabundance of information.  As a result, the world is
literally drowning in data.  The Electronic Industrial Age must
now be succeeded by an Information Age that focuses on the
extraction of knowledge from an ever expanding global information
base.  The assertion that knowledge is information with structure
is the conceptual linchpin for the development of associative
relationships that give relevance and context to information
fields and nodes. The key to the effectiveness of the Information
Age is to be found in this associative interrelationship between
information resources within a knowledge base, and the
relationship between the knowledge base and the information
requirements of the decision processes.

<cfile12>   Data Processing Technologies
<cfile13>   Information Systems
<cfile17>   Preservation Information Organization
<cfile18>   Problems in Information Science