Thinking about The Information Age - MDPI精品.pdfVIP

Informatics 2014, 1, 190-195; doi:10.3390/informatics 1030190 OPEN ACCESS informatics ISSN 2227-9709 /journal/informatics Editorial Thinking about The Information Age Antony Bryant Leeds Beckett University, Headingley Campus, Leeds LS6 3QS, UK; E-Mail: a.bryant@leedsbeckett.ac.uk; Tel. +44-113-812-7422 Received: 11 December 2014 / Accepted: 12 December 2014 / Published: 16 December 2014 In late October 2014, a new exhibition opened at The Science Museum in London. Titled “The Information Age: Six Networks That Changed Our World” [1], the exhibition received widespread publicity when it was opened by Queen Elizabeth who used this as the opportunity to send her first tweet, using the account @BritishMonarchy. “It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R. ” The museum proudly claims that the exhibition had been several years in planning, and is their biggest and most ambitious gallery to date. Oriented in a wheel-like structure into six sections or zones, one is immediately drawn to the giant and bizarre structure at the centre; a six-meter (20-ft) high copper and wood aerial tuning inductor from Rugby Radio Station. It was built in the 1920s for the General Post Office (forerunner to BT), to carry radiotelephony between the United Kingdom and America, and was the most powerful radio transmitter in the world at that time. The circle itself is divided into six ‘zones’ representing key information and communication tech