THE INFORMATION AGE IN CHARTS

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THE INFORMATION AGE IN CHARTS

By THOMAS A. STEWART REPORTER ASSOCIATE Jane Furth

April 4, 1994

(FORTUNE Magazine) – IT HAPPENED, AMAZINGLY, just three years ago: The Industrial Age gave way to the Information Age. In 1991 companies for the first time spent more on computing and communications gear -- the capital goods of the new era -- than on industrial, mining, farm, and construction machines. Info tech is now as vital -- and often as intangible -- as the air we breathe, which is filled with radio waves. In an automobile you notice the $675 worth of steel around you, but not the $782 worth of microelectronics. The Information Age drives the economy. The charts that follow show its infrastructure -- computers and communications devices -- and vast changes it is bringing to commerce and our lives. In the U.S., the ''infotainment'' industry -- film, publishing, spectator sports, telephones, TV, and associated hardware -- approaches $1 trillion in annual sales. Add $380 billion from global computer-industry sales and more from high-tech businesses like aerospace and drugs. Contemplating the size and importance of Info Age industries, Joseph Kraemer of the Deloitte & Touche consulting firm says wryly, ''Washington isn't pushing the National Information Infrastructure just because Al Gore likes to play with computers.''

Computers and communications: These are the parents of the Information Age. When they meet, the fireworks begin. But the glories of high tech must not distract us from the enduring wonder that techno-weenies call ''wetware.'' Wetware is what you have between your ears. All the world's technology is valuable only insofar as it extends (or augments, to use the verb du jour) wetware's power and reach. As a memory-storage device, the human genome is no | slouch, as you'll see in the final chart. And for fireworks, nothing else comes close.