The digital revolution
achieved in a fraction of the time it had taken previous generations. For the British Empire, the first modern hegemony, these networks were crucial in allowing London to be the capital of the world’s largest empire. Niall Ferguson argues that, without these globalizing technologies, challenges to Britain’s power, such as the Indian Mutiny, could not have been so easily suppressed. However, what distinguishes the digital revolution from previous technological revolutions is that its associated new technologies are far more universally accessible. The printing press was not available for use by the general public. It is true that the telegraph network, steam powered ships and railways were - but only to the relatively wealthy and not nearly to the same extent as digital technology. Even in some of the poorest countries, however, there are mobile phones and internet access. As of 2011 more than one in three humans, globally, used the internet, while in some Western countries internet users as a percentage of the population is near 100%. 39 Humanity is now connected in a new way, facilitating tomorrow’s history as well as reporting it. This new technology has allowed such an intensification of communication so as to completely change its nature and its role in the unfolding of events. 40 Globally, there are 4.8 billion mobile phone owners, which is 600 million more people than own a 39 ‘Percentage of Individuals Using the Internet 2000-2010’, International Telecommunications Union 40 Margaret Macmillan addresses this issue in The Uses and Abuses of History when discussing how much the public now knows about its politicians, celebrities and their scandals: ‘All this happened in the past, of course, but not under the intense spotlights that the media and the Internet provide today’. Imagine the abdication of Edward VIII in the 21st century: there is no chance that all the papers would have agreed not to publish details of the story, and even if they had the internet would have done. Paparazzi shots of Wallis Simpson in the backseat of cars would be widespread.
telegraphs and telephones, for instance. Photography allowed anyone, in theory, to see the absolute truth of any situation. 38 Technology has always had an undeniable effect on the progression of human affairs, but the Digital Age’s impact seems to be overshadowing that of its predecessors. always encouraged globalization, an ancient concept of making the world a smaller place. Initially this came in the form of the spread of commerce, through new trade routes across the globe. One of the greatest technologies of the Roman Empire, which allowed them to control such a vast portion of the known world, was the road. However, it was the great technological revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries that really facilitated the modern conception of ‘globalization’. Margaret Macmillan argues that ‘rapid communications, growing literacy, urbanization...all fed into the great wave of nationalism which shook Europe in the nineteenth century and the wide world in the twentieth’. As Niall Ferguson argues in Empire , the Industrial Revolution led to the development of three global networks which effectively created the beginnings of modern globalization. Steam powered ships cut the distance across the Atlantic from between four and six weeks’ travel to just ten days. Railways dramatically cut travel time on land. And perhaps most significantly, a telegraph network covered the Earth with thousands of miles of cables. All three technologies increased the speed with which humanity could communicate with itself. Messages could be sent from one side of the world to the other and received and read within hours. Likewise, face-to-face meetings could be 38 However, this concept of ‘ultimate truth’ was somewhat reversed with the development of first darkroom techniques to alter photographs - used by the Soviets to remove ‘unpeople’ from images, for example. These techniques went on to inspire the Knoll brothers to create Photoshop. New technologies have
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