Revolution of Technology
Sixteen pivotal technological eras spanning 1940 to 2025 — grouped across Computing Hardware, Internet & Web, Mobile & Communication, and Artificial Intelligence.
Data
| Category | Era / Milestone | Start | End | Key Facts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Computing Hardware | Transistor Era | 1947 | 1965 | Bell Labs invents the transistor (1947); replaces vacuum tubes in computers |
| Computing Hardware | Microprocessor | 1971 | 1985 | Intel 4004 (1971) — first commercially available microprocessor |
| Computing Hardware | Personal Computer | 1975 | 1995 | Altair 8800 (1975), Apple II (1977), IBM PC (1981), Macintosh (1984) |
| Computing Hardware | Quantum Computing | 2010 | 2025 | D-Wave (2011), Google quantum supremacy claim (2019), IBM 1000+ qubit chips |
| Internet & Web | ARPANET | 1969 | 1990 | First message sent over ARPANET (1969); foundation of the modern internet |
| Internet & Web | World Wide Web | 1991 | 2000 | Tim Berners-Lee publishes the Web (1991); Mosaic browser (1993); dot-com boom |
| Internet & Web | Web 2.0 & Social Media | 2004 | 2015 | Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), Twitter (2006), iPhone (2007), Instagram (2010) |
| Internet & Web | Cloud Computing | 2006 | 2025 | AWS launches (2006); Azure (2010), Google Cloud (2011); multi-cloud era |
| Mobile & Communication | Mobile Phone Networks | 1983 | 2000 | First commercial 1G call (1983); GSM/2G rollout (1991); global mobile adoption |
| Mobile & Communication | Broadband Internet | 1999 | 2010 | DSL & cable broadband replaces dial-up; home internet speeds multiply 100× |
| Mobile & Communication | Smartphone Era | 2007 | 2020 | Apple iPhone (2007), Android (2008); 3.5 billion smartphone users by 2020 |
| Mobile & Communication | 5G Networks | 2019 | 2025 | Commercial 5G rollout (2019); up to 10 Gbps speeds; enables IoT at scale |
| AI & Machine Learning | Early AI Research | 1956 | 1985 | Dartmouth Conference coins "AI" (1956); LISP, early neural networks, AI winters |
| AI & Machine Learning | Expert Systems | 1980 | 1995 | Rule-based systems deployed in medicine & finance; MYCIN, DENDRAL, R1/XCON |
| AI & Machine Learning | Machine Learning Era | 1995 | 2012 | SVMs, random forests, data-driven ML; IBM Deep Blue (1997), Netflix Prize (2009) |
| AI & Machine Learning | Deep Learning & Gen AI | 2012 | 2025 | AlexNet (2012), GPT-3 (2020), ChatGPT (2022), Gemini & Claude (2023–2024) |
Sources: Wikipedia — History of Computing, History of the Internet, History of Artificial Intelligence.