The Information Age is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution, to an economy centered on information technology. The onset of the Information Age has been linked to the development of the transistor in 1947. This technological advance has had a significant impact on the way information is processed and transmitted.

According to the United Nations Public Administration Network, the Information Age was formed by capitalizing on computer miniaturization advances, which led to modernized information systems and internet communications as the driving force of social evolution.

There is ongoing debate concerning whether the Third Industrial Revolution has already ended, and if the Fourth Industrial Revolution has already begun due to the recent breakthroughs in areas such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology. This next transition has been theorized to harken the advent of the Imagination Age, the Internet of things (IoT), and rapid advances in machine learning.

The digital revolution converted technology from analog format to digital format. By doing this, it became possible to make copies that were identical to the original. In digital communications, for example, repeating hardware was able to amplify the digital signal and pass it on with no loss of information in the signal. Of equal importance to the revolution was the ability to easily move the digital information between media, and to access or distribute it remotely. One turning point of the revolution was the change from analog to digitally recorded music. During the 1980s the digital format of optical compact discs gradually replaced analog formats, such as vinyl records and cassette tapes, as the popular medium of choice.

Humans have manufactured tools for counting and calculating since ancient times, such as the abacus, astrolabe, equatorium, and mechanical timekeeping devices. More complicated devices started appearing in the 1600s, including the slide rule and mechanical calculators. By the early 1800s, the Industrial Revolution had produced mass-market calculators like the arithmometer and the enabling technology of the punch card. Charles Babbage proposed a mechanical general-purpose computer called the Analytical Engine, but it was never successfully built, and was largely forgotten by the 20th century and unknown to most of the inventors of modern computers.

The Second Industrial Revolution in the last quarter of the 19th century developed useful electrical circuits and the telegraph. In the 1880s, Herman Hollerith developed electromechanical tabulating and calculating devices using punch cards and unit record equipment, which became widespread in business and government.

Meanwhile, various analog computer systems used electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic systems to model problems and calculate answers. These included an 1872 tide-predicting machine, differential analysers, perpetual calendar machines, the Deltar for water management in the Netherlands, network analyzers for electrical systems, and various machines for aiming military guns and bombs. The construction of problem-specific analog computers continued in the late 1940s and beyond, with FERMIAC for neutron transport, Project Cyclone for various military applications, and the Phillips Machine for economic modeling.

Building on the complexity of the Z1 and Z2, German inventor Konrad Zuse used electromechanical systems to complete in 1941 the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. Also during World War II, Allied engineers constructed electromechanical bombes to break German Enigma machine encoding. The base-10 electromechanical Harvard Mark I was completed in 1944, and was to some degree improved with inspiration from Charles Babbage's designs.