The seventy-year history of the computer era to date can be seen as the Gold Rush phase of data.
The firm has almost 500m mobile users, but its mobile apps are clunky and reflect the fact that its roots lie in the personal-computer era.
In the first 10 or 15 years of the personal computer era, it was amazing to think anyone could sell a million of them a year.
To understand the ascent of mobile, think about this: Qualcomm, the wireless chip maker, just surpassed the market value of Intel, the titanic microchip company of the computer era.
Gamification is in fact already gaining a foothold in education, and some would argue that it has always played a prominent role in one form or another, even in the pre-computer era.
The whole personal computer era can be seen as one giant triumph of dis-integration, as IBM's circuit-boards-to-boxes-to-software mainframe business gave way to the layered computer industry we see today: Intel making the electronics, Dell the boxes and Microsoft the software.
David Autor, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), points out that the main effect of automation in the computer era is not that it destroys blue-collar jobs but that it destroys any job that can be reduced to a routine.
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Windows 8 was an ambitious attempt to update the personal computer for the tablet era by moving to a new touchscreen interface based on colourful tiles, hiding the "desktop" launch screen familiar to white collar workers and consumers around the world.
Reagan, whose life spanned from the pre-Federal Reserve world at the time of his birth to the era of computer-driven financial innovation during his presidency, appreciated how difficult it was to achieve lasting monetary stability because he had seen the ups and downs of most of the twentieth century.
Under the FAA's current molasses-like bureaucratic procedures, it takes anywhere from 5 to 8 years to install new equipment--this in an era where new computer electronics systems come along every 18 to 24 months.
Generali says its employees have been transferring Holocaust-era policies on to computer files and are now close to completing their database.
But Mishra's goals aren't as far fetched as you might imagine -- the era of the vocal computer is upon us, friends.
Uncork the bubbly, boot up the computer, and usher in the new era in an appropriately futuristic way -- on the Internet.
Right there in the dock is a sight that in another era would have given Apple Computer's (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) fiercest defenders fits of panic: a Windows "Start" button available on a Mac.
James Hannigan: It was a bit unexpected and unplanned, although growing up in the era of the Atari 2600 and the home computer revolution, I loved games and was fascinated by the idea of eventually making music for them.
Of course the goal of advertising has always been to present the right message to the right consumers but the current form of television advertising that was ushered in during the Mad Men era is a blunt instrument in an age of computer controlled laser surgery.
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In an era of interactive television cables, the growth of computer checking and check-out counters, of security systems and telephones, all lodged together in computers, it would be relatively easy at some point to give a profile of a person and tell what they buy in a store, what kind of food they like, what sort of television programs they watch.
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But it was the era of flower power and free living, and entrepreneurship and computer design were not always at the forefront of his mind.
When the production of Skyfall called for the complete decimation of a classic 1960s era Aston Martin DB5, filmmakers opted for something a little more lifelike than computer graphics.
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Then, as now, there was talk of a new era, with electricity and the motor car playing the role of the Internet and the computer.
Haphazardly constructed over 40 years, it was based on 1960s, slide-rule era science that the Army Corps of Engineers never bothered to update, even as sophisticated computer models became the norm in engineering circles.
It was born in a different era, when free mobile apps proliferate through word of mouth, not crapware PC installations by computer makers and ads for shrink-wrapped software.
In an era where adversaries think nothing of dumping 500 million documents on each other in response to discovery requests, computer searches are the only realistic solution.
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