The Birth of Digital—A Brief History of Digital Technologies

Abstract

This chapter proposes a business-oriented definition of the term ``digital'' which we will be used throughout this book. We also consider the history behind the main waves of digital technology, from 1940 to 2020, to help contextualize how we arrived at our current situation so quickly and to hint at where the current pace of development could take us in just a few more decades. Finally, we highlight how digital technologies are becoming so finely ingrained into the physical world that it will soon make no sense to separate the ``physical world'' and the ``virtual world''.