Evolution of Media and Information Literacy

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards covering the evolution of media through the Pre-Industrial, Industrial, Electronic, and Information Ages based on the lecture notes, Information/Digital Ages.

Pre-Industrial Age

The period before the 1700s where people discovered fire, developed paper from plants, and forged tools and weapons using stone, bronze, copper, and iron.

Telegraph

Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse and other inventors, this device revolutionized long-distance communication by transmitting electrical signals over wires.

Papyrus

A writing medium used in Egypt around $2500\,BC$ and adopted across West Asia by $1000\,BC$; it was preferred over clay tablets because it was less breakable and lighter.

Cave Paintings

Parietal art involving the application of color pigments on the surfaces of ancient rock shelters, such as the monochrome black images found at Chauvet Cave dating to $35000\,BC$.

Clay Tablets

A writing medium used in Mesopotamia ($2400\,BC$) for cuneiform script, which was imprinted on wet clay using a reed stylus.

Acta Diurna

Daily Roman official notices carved on stone or metal and posted in public places like the Forum of Rome; the first forms appeared around $131\,BC$.

Dibao

Recognized as the earliest and oldest newspaper in the world, originating in China during the 2nd Century.

Codex

Folding books created by the Mayan civilization around the 5th Century, written in hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark cloth.

Industrial Age

A period spanning the 1700s to the 1930s characterized by the use of steam power, machine tools, iron production, and the manufacturing of products like books via the printing press.

Telephone

A device for transmitting vocal sounds patented by Alexander Graham Bell on March 7, 1876.

Typewriter

A writing machine first commercially successful in 1868, invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, Frank Haven Hall, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule.

The London Gazette

An official journal of the British government published starting in 1640 that claims to be the oldest surviving English newspaper.

Printing Press

A device for mass production invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440 in the Holy Roman Empire, based on existing screw presses.

Motion Pictures

Moving pictures developed at the end of the 19th century ($1890$) that transitioned from fairground novelties to essential 20th-century communication and entertainment tools.

Electronic Age

The period from the 1930s to the 1980s ushered in by the invention of the transistor, leading to the creation of transistor radios, electronic circuits, and early computers.

Transistor Radio

A portable radio receiver using transistor-based circuitry; after the transistor was invented in 1947, these became highly popular following their development in 1954.

UNIVAC 1

The Universal Automatic Computer, released in 1951, which was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers.

Mainframe computers

Large-scale computers like the IBM 704 ($1960$), which was the first mass-produced computer to feature floating-point arithmetic hardware.

Hewlett-Packard 9100A

An early personal computer or programmable calculator released in 1968.

Floppy Disk

A removable magnetic storage medium introduced in 1970 for moving information between electronic devices.

Apple 1

A desktop computer released by the Apple Computer Company in 1976, designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak.

Information Age

Also known as the Digital Age ($1900s-2000s$), this period is defined by the Internet, microelectronics, social networks, and the digitalization of voice, image, sound, and data.

NCSA Mosaic

The web browser released in 1993 that popularized the World Wide Web and supported multiple internet protocols like FTP and Gopher.

Blog

Short for "weblog," these are discussion or informational websites comprising discrete, informal diary-style text entries typically displayed in reverse chronological order.

Friendster

One of the original social networks launched in 2002, originally a social networking service that evolved into a social gaming site.

Facebook

A social networking service launched by Mark Zuckerberg as "Thefacebook" on February 4, 2004.

Twitter

An online news and social networking service founded in 2006 where users interact via "tweets," which were originally limited to 140 characters.

Tumblr

A microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 that allows users to post multimedia content to short-form blogs.