Dawn of the digital information era

, who founded one of the giants of the information tech­nology world, could not have been more wrong. In 1946, the head of International Business Machines, said: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Today, half a cen­tury later, as we head towards 1bn people with access to the internet, the true scale of his mis­calculation is apparent. Computers, and the semicon­ductors that power them, have invaded almost every aspect of our lives and become the engine for perhaps the greatest changes since the industrial revolution - the dawn of a digital information era ba