You will not be asked to date the transistor. You will be asked to explain how one development made the next possible — so learn the milestones as a chain of consequences.
Six milestones in order
Integrated circuit (1958)
Many components on one chip, so computers could shrink and get cheaper at the same time.
Microprocessor (1971)
A whole processor on a single chip — the computer stops being a building and becomes a component.
Personal computer (from 1981)
Computing moves from institutions to households and small businesses.
The internet (ARPANET 1969, TCP/IP 1983)
Machines that were islands become a network of networks.
Online social networks (from the 2000s)
The network carries relationships, not just documents — and becomes a place people live rather than visit.
Mobile and cloud (from 2007)
The device is in a pocket and the computing is somewhere else, so the whole network is available all the time.
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The web is worth separating out, because confusing it with the internet is the single commonest error in this part of the course.
The internet
- The physical and logical network — cables, routers, protocols
- Carries email, video calls, app traffic and the web alike
- Working from 1969; TCP/IP standardised in 1983
The World Wide Web
- ONE service that runs over the internet
- Linked documents fetched by a browser using HTTP
- Proposed 1989, public 1991
The six milestones, sorted by the two forces running through all of them: smaller and cheaper, and more connected.
Interactive diagram
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Real-world examples you can name
The milestones that built digital society — ENIAC 1945 · integrated circuit 1958 · Intel 4004 microprocessor 1971 · ARPANET 1969 · IBM PC 1981 · the World Wide Web proposed 1989, public 1991 · iPhone 2007
The sequence a question about the development of digital society expects you to be able to place: computing shrinks from a room to a chip, networks join the machines, the web makes the network readable, and the phone puts it in a pocket.
Who it affected: Everyone — this is the order everything else in this bank happened in.
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Across the whole chain the same two things happen over and over: computing gets smaller and cheaper, and it gets more connected. Everything else in the course follows from those two.
What the pattern lets you say
- Shrinking put a computer in every pocket, which is why data about individuals became abundant.
- Cheapening made it worth collecting data that has no obvious use yet.
- Connecting meant a local failure could become a global one — see WannaCry and the NHS (UK and worldwide, May 2017).
- Convergence is why the same device is now a camera, a bank and a medical sensor.
Continuity as well as change: The guide's concept of change includes continuity. Each milestone rearranged something that already existed — letters before email, catalogues before e-commerce — rather than inventing the need.
How this is tested — milestones are almost never asked for on their own — they are the evidence in an argument about change. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — structured question
- Part a: identify a milestone in the development of digital society
- Part c: “to what extent” has a named technology been revolutionary rather than evolutionary
Paper 2 — source-based question
- Q2: explain a claim a source makes about how fast change happened
- Q3: contrast two sources on whether change is accelerating
The trap: a timeline with no argument: Listing dates is AO1 and caps low. The marks come from saying what each step made possible that was impossible before.
Identify two milestones in the development of digital society.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Evaluate the claim that the smartphone was the most significant milestone in the development of digital society.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.