Many believe that one is currently witnessing a revolution comparable to the industrial revolution with a transition to a post-industrial information society. The degree of exploitation of material resources like steel, coal, and oil was the critical parameter for the industrial revolution. This is now replaced by a multitude of manifestations and transmissions of valuable information in the form of commercial transactions -especially financial transactions-, communication within organizations and between individuals, and entertainment in the form of movies, music, and TV.
It is a straightforward calculation to see that the "limits to growth" of an industrial society do not (or only to a much lesser degree) apply to an information society. Besides the theoretical argument there are also a number of very practical reasons why growth in the information sector is much less coupled to growth in material or energy consumption. For instance "tele-commuting" can reduce a large fraction of the transportation needs of a society. Therefore it is not surprising that a majority of innovations in the last quarter of this century where related to "smart technologies" that allow fast processing of increasingly complex information. Prominent examples are transportation, communication, and media technologies. For instance both civilian and military aircraft design has not changed dramatically since the introduction of the B-52 bomber and Boeing 707 passenger plane in the mid fifties. Most innovative changes that allow both planes to continue to fly today have taken place in electronics and flight computers.