Information Age Notes
Surigao Del Norte State University
Specific Issue: Science, Technology, and Society (GE STS)
Information Age
The information age is characterized by:
High modernization
Automation
Data-driven processes
Technological advancements
Key Concepts
Communication and Information are central themes.
Information Revolution is a key period.
Von Baeyer: "Being informed means literacy".
Defining Information
Information is defined as "knowledge communicated or obtained concerning a specific fact or circumstance."
Information Age Defined
A historical period that began in the last quarter of the 20th century.
A time when information became easily accessible through publications.
The management of information is primarily done by computers and computer networks.
Related developments include:
Development of computers
Digital Age
New Media Age
Theory of Information Age (1982) - James R. Messenger
Based on the interconnection of computers via telecommunications.
Information systems operate in real-time and on an as-needed basis.
Driven by convenience and user-friendliness, which creates user dependence.
The Pre-Gutenberg Era
Characterized by limited literacy.
Almost no one could read or write in their spoken language.
Few literate individuals mastered Latin.
Books were rare, expensive, hand-copied, and mostly in Latin.
Most people never saw a book, calendar, map, or any written work.
Memory and memorization were crucial for daily life and learning.
Poets, actors, and storytellers used rhyming to remember large amounts of material.
Craftsmen memorized trade secrets to pass them orally to apprentices.
Mechanics kept accounts in their heads.
The Gutenberg Press
Invented in 1445 by Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith.
Gutenberg Press Mechanics
Movable type printing used metal stamps of single letters.
These stamps were arranged into words, sentences, and pages of text.
The arranged stamps were inked and pressed onto paper using a large, manually operated press.
Movable type allowed printers to reuse letters quickly on subsequent pages.
The Gutenberg Revolution
The printing press enabled faster and cheaper book production.
By 1463, printed Bibles cost one-tenth of hand-copied Bibles.
The demand for books increased significantly.
By 1500, Europe had over 1,000 printers and 7,000 books in print.
Books facilitated the rapid spread of new ideas and accelerated change.
Christopher Columbus was inspired by Marco Polo's Travels.
Newspapers and pamphlets disseminated information and ideas even more rapidly.
Impact of the Printing Press
Allowed for the rapid spread of accurate information.
Planted the seeds of democracy and human rights.
Increased literacy rates and exposure to various types of information.
Contributed to the decline of the Church, the rise of a money economy, and the Renaissance.
Opened learning and reading to local populations, leading to the establishment of schools and publication of educational books.
Introduced mass communication, permanently altering societal structure.
The unrestricted circulation of information and revolutionary ideas transcended borders, impacting the Reformation and challenging political and religious authorities.
Increased literacy broke the literate elite's monopoly on education and learning, bolstering the emerging middle class.
Increased cultural self-awareness led to the rise of proto-nationalism, accelerated by the spread of European vernacular languages.
Established a community of scientists who could easily communicate discoveries through scholarly journals, facilitating the scientific revolution.
Authorship became more meaningful and profitable, emphasizing the importance of who said or wrote what, the precise formulation, and the timing of information.
Printing Materials as Agents of Change
The printing press:
Allowed for the spread of knowledge within elite communities (e.g., the Catholic Church and scientific community) and the general population.
Brought about social dynamics that led to social revolutions.
Facilitated new innovations and ideas that shifted power and standards in religious and scientific areas, including:
A shift in religious power from church authority to the general population.
Standardization of scientific reporting.
An influx of new scientific discoveries.
The Post-Gutenberg Period
Enigma M4 Cipher Machine:
Developed in the early 20th century and used by the German Military during World War II.
The Allies faced a shortage of human computers for military calculations.
The United States addressed this by building the Harvard Mark 1.
The British needed mathematicians to crack the Enigma code.
Alan Turing:
An English mathematician hired in 1963 by the British Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park.
He solved problems using simple instructions encoded on paper tape.
Demonstrated simulation of a Turing machine to construct a single Universal Machine.
Computers
An electronic device that stores and processes data (information).
Revolutionized various aspects of society, including business, education, science, and entertainment.
Subsequent decades saw rapid advancements, leading to mainframe computers, minicomputers, personal computers, and mobile devices.
In the 1970s, the generation who witnessed the dawn of the computer age was described as having "electronic brains" and desired their own Personal Computer.
Types of Computers
Personal Computer (PC)
Laptops
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)
Server
Mainframes
Wearable Computers
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)
Tightly integrated computers that typically use a touch screen for user inputs.
Smaller than a paperback, lightweight, and battery-powered.
Servers
Computers improved to provide network services to other computers.
Typically have powerful processors, large amounts of memory, and large hard drives.
Mainframes
Huge computer systems that can fill an entire room.
Used by large firms to process millions of transactions daily.
Internet
Claude E. Shannon: A mathematician considered the "Father of Information Theory."
World Wide Web (Internet)
Claude E. Shannon: Proposed that information can be quantitatively encoded as a sequence of ones and zeroes.
Internet Defined
A worldwide system of interconnected networks facilitating data transmission among innumerable computers.
Developed in the 1970s by the Department of Defense.
Initially used by scientists for communication.
Phone lines were used for transmission at a limited rate.
Government-controlled project until 1984; the initial problem was speed.
Fiber-optics allowed the transmission of billions of bits of information per minute.
Companies like "Intel" developed faster microprocessors like the i5 and i7 to process data quickly.
Social Media
Introduced from variations of:
Multi-user chat rooms
Instant-messaging applications
Bulletin-board forum systems
Game-based social networking sites
Business-oriented social networking websites
Messaging, video, and voice calling services
Blogging platforms, image and video hosting websites
Discovery and dating-oriented websites
Video sharing services
Real-time social media feed aggregators
Live Streaming
Photo-sharing websites
Question and Answer platforms
Application of Computers in Science and Research
Bioinformatics: The application of information technology to store, organize, and analyze vast amounts of biological data, such as sequences and structures of proteins and nucleic acids (Madan, n.d.).
How to Check the Reliability of Web Sources
The internet contains valuable information but may also contain unreliable or biased information.
Guidelines:
Author: Who is the author of the article/site?
Publisher: Who published the site?
.edu = educational
.com = commercial
.org = organization
.mil = military
.gov = government
Purpose: What is the main purpose of the site? Why did the author write it, and why did the publisher post it?
Audience: Who is the intended audience?
Quality of Information:
Timelines: When was the website first published? Is it regularly updated? Check for dates at the bottom of each page.
Sources: Does the author cite sources? Web sources that cite their sources are considered more reliable.
Links: What type of other sites does the website link to? Are they reputable sites?
Four Ethical Issues of the Information Age (PAPA)
Privacy
Accuracy
Property
Accessibility
Information Anxiety
Produced by the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand (Richard Saul Wurman).
Truths About the Information Age (Robert Harris)
The information must compete.
Newer is equated with truer.
Selection is a viewpoint.
The media sells what the culture buys.
The early word gets the perm
You are what you eat and so as your brain
Anything in great demand will be counterfeited
Ideas are seen as controversial
Undead information walks ever on
Media presence creates the story
The medium selects the message
The whole truth is a pursuit
Paradoxes of Technology
Empowerment vs. Enslavement:
New technologies allow us to be connected and reachable by everyone, yet our privacy is threatened, and technology starts controlling us.
We feel socially obliged to answer phone calls, emails, and messages.
Independent vs. Dependence:
New gadgets allow us to do many things on our own, yet we develop a dependency on them.
We feel helpless without our phones or when the internet is down.
Fulfill Needs vs. Create Needs:
Technology resolves some problems, but it introduces new ones.
We need devices with longer battery life, antivirus software, and new skills.
Competence vs. Incompetence:
We can get any information and reach anyone, yet we lose our ability to remember phone numbers and articulate thoughts.
Engaging vs. Disengaging:
While engaged in technology, we disengage from our surroundings and interact less with family and loved ones.
Public vs. Private:
New technologies blur the line between what is public and what is private.
Public phone calls and messages among acquaintances can be disturbing.
Illusion vs. Disillusion:
We tend to think new communication technologies make our lives better, but the more we communicate, the more trivial our conversations become.
More \& communication \neq Better\\ communication