The infrastructure for processing and transforming information at scale — from Babbage's mechanical difference engine through the first electronic computers to the networked systems that now mediate commerce, communication, science, and government worldwide. Computing is the story of how humanity built infrastructure that amplifies information processing as roads amplify movement and electricity amplifies energy.
Agriculture amplified food production. Industrialization amplified energy production. Computing amplified information processing. Each amplification reorganized civilization around its new capability. The Agricultural Revolution made cities possible. The Industrial Revolution made industrial economies possible. Computing has made the information economy possible — and is now enabling forms of scientific discovery, economic organization, and political power we are still working out. The difference: the first two amplifications were physical. This one is cognitive. For the first time, a technology can manipulate symbols — and through symbols, everything that symbols represent.