information age

American  

noun

(sometimes initial capital letters)

1. a period beginning about 1975 and characterized by the gathering and almost instantaneous transmission of vast amounts of information and by the rise of information-based industries.

---

information age British  

noun

1. a time when large amounts of information are widely available to many people, largely through computer technology

---

Etymology

Origin of information age

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

information age

The new information age didn’t stop the market built on margin loans from crashing down in October 1929, six weeks after the Dow’s high.

From Barron's ● Apr. 15, 2026

"We live in the information age, yet we store our knowledge in media that are astonishingly short-lived," says Alexander Kirnbauer.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 29, 2026

The Industrial Revolution, the information age, and the early digital economy all show what happens when we let innovation raise the baseline: more opportunity, more discovery, more unexpected flashes of genius.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 10, 2025

Or, as Green Day sang, you are part of the information age of hysteria.

From Salon ● Oct. 17, 2024

Trained as an electrical engineer, in the 1920s he had invented a machine known as a differential analyzer: an analog computer whose digital offspring would dominate the information age.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik