The growing sophistication of information technologies — a hallmark of the globalizing age — has had a profound and rapidly evolving effect on patterns of communications, commerce, and politics. Digitalization transformed familiar forms of communication in a few short decades. Many of these changes centered on the Internet, which began its rapid expansion around the globe in the late 1980s. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the evolution of the cell phone into the smartphone, with its multimedia telecommunications features and more functions and power than the desktop computers of the previous decade, hastened the change. The growing popularity of Internet-based communication tools such as e-mail, text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media changed the way friends, families, and businesses kept in touch.

Entire industries were dramatically changed by the emergence of the Internet. With faster speeds and better online security came online shopping; people increasingly relied on the Internet to purchase goods, from clothes to computers to groceries. Online file sharing of books and popular music transformed the publishing and music industries, while massive online retailers undermined traditional distribution and retail systems.

The rapid growth of the Internet and social media raised complex questions related to personal privacy and politics. Governments and businesses can monitor personal Web use and use online tracking systems to amass an extraordinary amount of information on individuals and then use it to monitor political activities or target advertising. Privacy advocates worked with government regulators to shape laws that might preserve key elements of online privacy, and in general, rules were more stringent in Europe than in the United States. Conversely, citizens could use smartphones and social media sites to organize protest campaigns. Facebook and Twitter, for example, helped mobilize demonstrators in Egypt during the Arab Spring (see page 976) and allowed members of the Occupy movement to share news and shape strategy. A number of authoritarian states, from North Korea to Iran to Cuba, recognizing the disruptive powers of the Internet, strictly limited online access.