The Digital and Technological Revolution

The Internet originated in American military and academic networks of the 1960s and 1970s and expanded globally during the 1990s. Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web in 1989-1991 radically transformed the Internet's accessibility and usability, and the commercial expansion of the Internet during the 1990s drove a major economic transformation known as the digital "new economy," though the bursting of the "dot-com" technology bubble in 2000 exposed the financial risks tied to speculation in the tech sector. The rise of search engines, particularly Google, fundamentally transformed global access to information, while social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram reshaped patterns of communication and social interaction worldwide.