Knowledge
At the root of all knowledge is inquiry.  Building understanding requires confidence that underlying principles are well proved, and the best way to know that is to know from experience.  Models test principles in action, providing benefits, assuming the principles are sound.

Concept mapping
A very common knowledge construction tool in education is the concept map.  The concept map has been used in education far longer than computers, yet today concept maps are associated with technology, and are often called mind maps.

Group learning
When developing interest in science for students, it is better to allow students to form inquiry groups, and enable their scientific inquiry with the types of instruments often made available for public use in museums.

Operating Systems
The Unix system introduces a human communications interface with Shell, and defines everything related to the computer as a file, as objects in a hierarchical directory structure.

Objects
Object-Oriented Technology creates class structures for code, primarily in a module architecture.  The concept of shared libraries is expanded to where then entire program structure is a single class module.

Modules

The Microkernel, Independent of the unstable technological and financial environment of the Information Society, two operating systems, the ExOS and L4 are developed that bring computer code execution close to the CPU, increasing efficiency, and adding modularity to the execution process which allows computer operation code to be loaded in the same ways that program code is loaded.

Development Techniques
In parallel with object oriented developments, social workspace models are suggested that empower humans within highly modular logic and data environments.  They also show an evolution of the computer communications environment that parallels developing concepts about natural human organization and developmental education, such as Constructivism.

The Public Domain 
While business has dominated the development of the computer, it was the public domain that introduced the significant contribution of the spreadsheet application.  In parallel with business, programmers and computer freedom activists write code and then release into the public domain.  This significantly alters the business model of centralized control through monopolism, by giving high quality software to technologists who are not motivated by business greed, but seek to participate in the market economy for the benefit of humanity.  The public domain environment so accelerates the development of the greatest contribution to the Information Society, the Internet, that the major computer monopoly, Microsoft, is caught by surprise and is forced to alter its business strategy one hundred and eighty degrees.  Despite the strength of the public domain computing community, only a few free systems, as it were, take a dominating lead: the Linux operating system combined with the Apache webserver, serve most web pages.  The Linux community develops the OS into a distributed super computing architecture and it becomes a viable replacement for the mainframe.  The leading search engine, Google, and the weather service, NOAA, depend on it to run their supercomputing architectures.

Application centricty 
In an attempt to mirror thought architecture of the human, Apple Computers, with the Macintosh, introduces an intuitive virtual desktop where windows contain text, art, and business applications within them.  Drag-and-drop capabilities, where both data and application instances are treated as objects, allows computer users to associate data with applications, and to be able to bring data to "places" such as a garbage area, or an application.  Still, data is associated by type with specific applications, and often only one application increasing the tendencies to monopolise the computer environment.

Linear data storage
The most significant computer business contribution, the spreadsheet application, allows the entry of numerical data in simple the column and row structures of business tables, and adds the significant capabilities of applying mathematical formulas the structured number sets.  By changing individual values in a numerical structure that is interrelated by a formula, users can see how the other numbers will change.  This brings the "what if" capability of numerical prediction to the average business person.  Beyond this, the relational database gives the same capabilities but in a mass storage environment.  Entire sets of tables can be sequentially processed, where each row of a table represents some item, such as an asset or a human.

Technological and Financial Collapse 
In March of 2000, a series of collapses in the NASDAQ technology and innovation markets causes a world recession that borders on a minor depression.  Nearly simultaneously, terror attacks against key development regions, the revelation of widespread corruption in corporate structures, and the transshipment of technology services to highly repressive nations freezes conceptual innovation.