当今广泛流传着一种说法,未来社会是信息社会。这是因为信息在社会生活中的作用愈来愈大,然而仅靠信息是不能构成一个社会的纵观人类社会发展史,可看到界线分明的三个时代。(一)人力时代。在蒸汽机出现以前,不管是能量变换,还是信息变换,主要靠人类自身来完成。在这样的时代中,人类创造的财富十分有限,社会进步极其缓慢。 There is a widely held account today that the future society is the information society. This is because the role of information in social life is getting bigger and bigger. However, information alone can not constitute a society. Throughout the history of the development of human society, we can see three distinct times. (A) manpower era. Before the advent of the steam engine, whether it was energy conversion or information transformation, it was mainly done by human beings themselves. In such an era, the wealth created by mankind is very limited and social progress is extremely slow.