The Information Age is a name sometimes given to the period after the Industrial Age. Opinions differ on whether we are currently living in the Information Age or whether it is still to come.

The most basic definition of an information age is one where the production of information is more important than the production of actual goods. The service sector will be far larger than the manufacturing sector .

Rival names for this period are the Space Age, the Atomic Age or simply the Post-industrial society.

According to Manuel Castells, the Information Age (or Informationalism , in contrast with Industrialism) started in the technological divide of 1970s, with inventions like the microprocessor, microcomputer, optical fiber, and TCP/IP protocol -- the basis of the technological system in which we are fully immersed today.