Preface
In the last half-century, tremendous progress has been made in all technical fields. One of the outstanding successes has been the ability to encode everything related to communications in digital symbols so that the full range of media are compatible with one another and their signals can be mixed and carried over a common network. The driving force for this convergence was provided by ARPAnet, the pioneering data network sponsored by the United States government. Now called Internet, it provides a public, worldwide network that allows users with computer-based devices to exchange digital multimedia communication.
Since about 1980, much of the developed world has used the Internet as the basis of entertainment, business, and personal services. For this reason the period from 1980 through the present is often called the “digital age,” and those fortunate to grow up in this time period are known as “digital natives.” They are persons who naturally accept cellphones, laptops, iTunes, and the Internet as normal, readily available parts of their lives. I doubt anyone in the generations before them foresaw that point-contact Germanium transistors, and stored-program computers in their air-conditioned fortresses, would lead to sticks with many gigabits of memory, to wireless and landline connections operating at speeds of several gigabits per second, to computers on a chip, to optical fiber transmission, and the capability of anyone to participate in global social networks in ...
