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Revolution or Evolution
The Internet caused a paradigm shift so severe that even Bill Gates missed its significance at first. The folks at Microsoft thought that the Net was just a plaything for academics, college kids, and military-industrial establishment spooks. Now, they are betting the future of their company and their stock options on this worldwide communications phenomenon.

There is nothing evolutionary about the Internet. It is not the natural outgrowth of the telegraph or telephone or even television, although it shares some common characteristics. The Industrial Age is dead, and it has been replaced by the Communications Age. Note: It's not the Computer Age even though it is powered by computer technology.

And the Communications Age, like the Industrial Age, entails a revolution in how folks earn a living and exchange goods and services. It disrupts and re-shapes markets and the very lives of those fortunate to be able to live through it.

When we talk about the new economy, we're talking about a world in which people work with their brains instead of their hands. A world in which communications technology creates global competition — not just for running shoes and laptop computers, but also for bank loans and other services that can't be packed into a crate and shipped. A world in which innovation is more important than mass production. A world in which investment buys new concepts or the means to create them, rather than new machines. A world in which rapid change is a constant. A world at least as different from what came before it as the industrial age was from its agricultural predecessor. A world so different its emergence can only be described as a revolution.

Wired, Encyclopedia of the New Economy