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The information revolution is a theoretical construct within which some trends in current society can be conceptualized. Many competing terms have been proposed that focus on different aspects of this social trend.

The British polymath crystallographer J. D. Bernal, writing in the late 1930s, introduced the term "scientific and technical revolution" in his book The Social Function of Science to describe the new role that science and technology are coming to play within society. He believed that science is becoming a "productive force", using the Marxist Theory of Productive Forces. After some controversy, the term was taken up by authors and institutions of the then-Soviet Bloc. Their aim was to show that socialism was a safe home for the scientific and technical ("technological" for some authors) revolution, referred to by the acronym STR. The book Civilization at the Crossroads, edited by the Czech philosopher Radovan Richta, became a standard reference for this topic.

Daniel Bell soon challenged this approach with his Post Industrial Society, which took the view that the current trend is towards a service economy rather than socialism. Many other authors presented their views, including Z. Brzezinski with his "Technetronic Society".

The main feature of the new economy is information. Information is also the central theme of several new sciences, which emerged in the 1940s, including Shannon's (1949) Information Theory and Wiener's (1948) Cybernetics.

Information is then further considered as an economic activity, since firms and institutions are involved in the production, distribution, processing, and transmission of Information. Labor is also divided between physical labour (goods) and informational labour (services). A new economic sector is thereby identified, the Information Sector, which amalgamates information related labour activities. Porat (1976) measured the Information Sector in the US using the input-output analysis; OECD has included statistics on the Information Sector in the economic reports of its member countries. Veneris (1984, 1990) explored the theoretical, economic and regional aspects of the Informational Revolution and developed a systems dynamics simulation computer model. The term Information Revolution may sometimes be preferred to terms such as "Information economy/society", in order to relate to the previously used terms Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution.

• Bell, D. (1980) Sociological Journeys: Essays 1960-1980, Heinmann, London.
• Bernal, J. D. (1939), The Social Function of Science, London.
• Brzezinksi, Z (1976), Between the Rwo Ages: America in the Technetronic Era, Penguin
• Clark, C (1940), Conditions of Economic Progress, McMillan and Co, London.
• Grinin, L. (2007), Periodization of History: A theoretic-mathematical analysis. In: History & Mathematics. Moscow: KomKniga/URSS. P.10-38. ISBN 9785484010011.
• Marx, K, (1977), Capital, Progress Publishers, Moscow.
• Porat, M-U (1976) The Information Economy, PhD Diss., Univ. of Stanford. This thesis measured the role of the Information Sector in the US Economy.
• Ricardo, D (1978) The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Dent, London. (first published in 1817).
• Richta, R, Ed., (1969) Civilization at the Crossroads, ME Sharp, NY
• Shannon, C. E. and W. Weaver, (1949), The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana, Ill., University of Illinois Press.
• Veneris, Y (1984) The Informational Revolution, Cybernetics and Urban Modelling, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. This thesis developed a large scale dynamic simulation model of the transition from an industrial to an informational economy.
• Veneris, Y (1990) Modeling the transition from the Industrial to the Informational Revolution, Environment and Planning A 22(3):399-416.
• Wiener, N, (1948) Cybernetics, MIT Press, CA, Mass.

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