Timeline of digital work
The information revolution is a discontinuity in economic history
James Plunkett
Modern work is in a state of flux as part of the discontinuous change brought on by the information revolution. Perhaps, by considering the factors that shaped the ways we work today we can better understand what its future might look like and whether a dominant design will emerge or whether work will continue changing.
The cultural changes and technological inventions that created our experience of digital work
2022
ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot, launched
2021
The term “The Great Resignation” is first used by Anthony Klotz, organisational psychologist and professor at Texas A & M University
2020
National lockdowns and enforced working from home force many workplaces to quickly adopt digital technology and remote working practices
2016
3.7 billion people are connected to the Internet
1,000,000,000 websites on the Internet
2012
The population of the Internet reached 2 billion
Union membership in the UK drops below 6 million for the first time since the 1940s
2011
The phrase Fourth Industrial Revolution was introduced by Kagermann, Lukas and Wahlster,
2009
Tina Brown coins the term ‘Gig economy’
2007
First iPhone and the start of the smart phone revolution
2005
The population of the Internet reached 1 billion
2003
Myspace launched
2001
The agile manifesto for software development is written
FANUC, a Japanese robotics company, begins operating as a ‘lights-out’ factory where robots build other robots
2000
10,000,000 websites on the Internet
1998
Google incorporated
1996
1,000,000 websites on the Internet
1991
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, by Geoffrey Moore is published
Invention of WiFi
1986
The New New Product Development Game by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka is published in Harvard Business Review
1985
Symbolics Computer Company is the first business to register a commercial dot-com domain name
1983
Motorola created the first mobile phone, the Motorola DynaTac
1980
First laptop
1976
Apple founded
1975
Microsoft founded
1973
First portable cell phone
1972
The term “telecommuting” was coined
1970
Equal Pay Act in the U.K.
1963
The term “hacker” originates with MIT pranks
Equal Pay Act in the U.S.
1960
Open plan office layout widely adopted
1959
The term “knowledge worker” was introduced by Peter Drucker in The Landmarks of Tomorrow
1957
Fairchild semiconductor founded
1950
Cross-functional teams
1948
Claude Shannon, a Bell Labs mathematician, is credited for having laid out the foundations of digitalization in his pioneering 1948 article, A Mathematical Theory of Communication
1947
The transistor is invented by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain.
Schumpeter argued that the innovation and technological change of a nation come from the entrepreneurs or wild spirits. He coined the word Unternehmergeist, German for “entrepreneur-spirit”, and asserted that “… the doing of new things or the doing of things that are already being done in a new way” stemmed directly from the efforts of entrepreneurs.
1939
Hewlett Packard founded
1931
Neil H McElroy, of P&G, invented the concept of a Product Manager
1924
Creative Experience was published by Mary Parker Follett
1885
Stanford university founded
1848
The first computer program is written by Ada Lovelace
1821
English mathematician Charles Babbage conceives of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers
1801
Manufacturing of interchangeable parts introduced by Eli Whitney
1784
The first factory opened in Cheshire by textile merchant Samuel Greg
1776