Thanks to information surge, each one of us in the modern world has more machine power available at a fingertip than any Roman emperor. A medieval king would have needed legions of horsemen riding for months to be able to deliver one-thousandth of the number of messages we can transmit in a few moments to the ends of the earth by phone or fax. A single CD-ROM can carry the whole of Renaissance science and philosophy. When information surge happens, it sweeps through human society in a powerful, innovating wave that in some way changes everything everywhere.
Surge brings together people and places and ideas in totally new ways.
From these new relationships come new entities and new ways of living. Most important of all, information surge changes the way we think. We are experiencing a transformational surge of innovation and convergence of information technologies. Three thousand years ago the Greek alphabet was the first truly transparent means of communication, because it could be used to express any language. We could now cut up the universe the better to understand it.