1.8 Summary

Before we could have the information, entertainment, and mass communications industries, we needed masses of people gathered together in urban environments. This gathering came about because of the Industrial RevolutionIndustrial Revolution: A period in which agricultural and manual labor based economies transformed and mechanized labor practices into highly efficient, large scale, factory manufacturing systems. , which created the conditions for technology to flourish and the public to be able to use these developing tools. Advances in electricity and electronics allowed our communications to accelerate both literally and through customer adoption. From the earliest books to the wireless 5G networks that power our smartphones, we continue to find ways to record and share information with those around us, and in doing so, we change how we interact with each other and the world we live in.