IFUGAO STATE UNIVERSITY – LAGAWE CAMPUS
Science, Technology and Society
Chapter 5
The Information Age
The Information Age
- period starting in the last quarter of 20th century
- information became effortlessly accessible by computers and computer networks.
JAMES R. MESSENGER
– proposed the Theory of Information Age in 1982 “The information age is a true new age based upon the interconnection of
computers via telecommunications, with these information systems operating on both a real time and as needed basis.
Timeline of the Information Age
300 BC – Sumerians writing system used pictographs to 1939 – Regularly scheduled television broadcasting in the US
represent words
2900 BC – beginnings of Egyptian hieroglyphics writing 1940s – beginnings of information science as a discipline.
1300 BC – use of Tortoise shell and oracle bone writing 1945 – Vannevar Bush foresaw the invention of hypertext
500 BC – Papyrus roll was used 1946 – ENIAC computer was developed
220 BC – Chinese small seal writing was developed 1948 – Birth of field-of-information theory proposed by Claude
E. Shannon.
100 AD – Book (parchment codex) 1957 – Planar transistor was developed by Jean Hoerni
105 AD – Augusta Lady Byron writes the world’s first 1958 – First integrated circuit
computer program
105 AD – Woodblock printing & paper invented in China 1960s – Library of Congress developed LC MARC (machine-
readable code)
1455 – Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press 1969 – UNIX operating system was developed, which could
using movable metal type handle multitasking
1755 – Samuel Johnson’s dictionary standardized 1971 – Intel introduced the first microprocessor chip.
English spelling 1972 – Optical laserdisc was developed by Philips and MCA
1802 – the Library of Congress was established; 1974 – MCA and Philips argued on a standard videodisc
Invention of the Carbon Arc Lamp encoding format.
1824 – research on persistence of vision published 1975 – Altair Microcomputer Kit was released: first personal
1837 – invention of telegraph in Great Britain & in US computer for the public.
1876 – Dewey Decimal system was introduced 1977 – RadioShack introduced the 1st complete personal
1877 – Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated high-speed computer
photography 1984 – Apple Macintosh computer was introduced.
1899 – First magnetic recordings were released Mid 1980s-1978 – Artificial Intelligence was separated from
information science
1902 – Motion picture special effects were used 1991 – release of 450 complete works of literature on one CD-
1906 – Lee DeForest invented the electronic amplifying ROM
tube (triode) January 1997 – RSA (encryption and network security
1923 – Television software) Internet security code cracked for a 48-bit number
1926 – First practical sound movie
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IFUGAO STATE UNIVERSITY – LAGAWE CAMPUS
Science, Technology and Society
ROBERT HARRIS
“TRUTHS OF THE INFORMATION AGE”
1. Information must be complete.
2. Newer is equated with truer.
3. Selection is a viewpoint.
4. The media sells what the culture buys.
5. You are what you eat and so is your brain.
6. Anything in great demand will be counterfeited.
7. Ideas are seen as controversial.
8. Undead information walks ever on.
9. Media presence creates history.
10. The medium selects the message.
11. The whole truth is a pursuit.
COMPUTER
- most important contributions of advances in the Information Age to society
- electronic device that stores and processes data (information)
- It runs on a program that contains the exact, step-by- step directions to solve a problem.
TYPES OF COMPUTER
• Personal Computer (PC) – First known as microcomputers.
• Desktop Computer – Described as a PC that is not designed for portability.
• Laptops – These are portable computers that integrate the essentials of a desktop computer in a battery-powered
package, which are somewhat larger than a typical hard cover book.
• Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) – These are tightly integrated computers that usually have no keyboards
but rely on a touch screen for user input.
• Server – It refers to a computer that has been improved to provide network services to other computers.
• Mainframes – These are huge computer systems that can fill an entire room. The term “mainframe” has been
replaced by enterprise server.
• Wearable Computers – They involve materials that are usually integrated into cellphones, watches, and other
small objects or places.
• The world wide web (internet)
• The internet is a worldwide system of interconnected networks that facilitate data transmission among innumerable
computers.
CLAUDE E. SHANNON
- Father of Information Theory
- He worked at Bell Laboratories and at age 32, he published a paper proposing that information can be quantitatively
encoded as a sequence of ones and zeroes.
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IFUGAO STATE UNIVERSITY – LAGAWE CAMPUS
Science, Technology and Society
SERGEY BRIN AND LARRY PAGE
- Directors of a Stanford research project, built a search engine that listed results to reflect page popularity when they
determined that the most popular result would frequently be the most usable.
GOOGLE
- Is now the world’s most popular search engine, accepting more than 200 million queries daily.
BILL GATES - Microsoft STEVE JOBS - Apple
MARK ZUCKERBERG – Facebook
APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTERS IN SCIENCE AND RESEARCH
BIOINFORMATICS is the application of information technology to store, organize, and analyze vast amount of biological
data which is available in the form of sequences and structures of proteins-the building blocks of organisms and nucleic
acids-the information carrier.
Software tools
• Blast – used for comparing sequences
• Annotator – an interactive genome analysis tool
• GeneFinder – tool to identify coding regions and splice sites
Pharmacogenomics - where potential targets for drug development are hypothesized from the genome sequences.
HOW TO CHECK THE RELIABILITY OF WEB SOURCES
1. Who is the author of the article/site?
• Does the author provide his/her credentials?
• What type of expertise does he/she have on the subject he or she is writing about?
• Does he/she indicate what his/her education is?
• What type of experience does he/she have?
• Should you trust his/her knowledge of the subject?
• What kind of websites are associated with the author’s name?
• Do commercial sites come up?
2. Who published the site?
• Look at the domain name of the website that will tell you who is hosting the site.
• Search the domain name. It will provide information about the owners of registered domain names.
• Do not ignore the suffix on the domain name (the three-letter part that comes after the “.”)
Examples:
.edu= educational
.com=commercial
.mil= military
.gov= government
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IFUGAO STATE UNIVERSITY – LAGAWE CAMPUS
Science, Technology and Society
3. What is the main purpose of the site? Why did the author write it and why did the publisher post it?
• To sell a product?
• As a personal hobby?
• As public service?
• To further scholarship on a topic?
• To provide general information on a topic?
• To persuade you of a particular point of view?
4. Who is the intended audience?
• Scholars or the general public?
• Which age group is it written for?
• Is it aimed at people from a particular geographic area?
• Is it aimed at members of a particular profession or with specific training.
5. What is the quality of information provided on the website?
• Timeliness: When was the website first published?
• Does the author cite sources?
• What type of other sites does the website link to?
• What types of sites link to the website you are evaluating? Is the website being cited by others?
Examples of Useful and Reliable Web Sources
• AFA e-Newsletter - ( Alzheimer’s Foundation of America newsletter)
• American Memory- the Library Congress historical digital collection.
• Bartleby.com Great Books Online- a collection of free e-books including fictions, nonfictions, references, and
verses.
• Chronicling America- search and view pages from American newspaper from 1880-1922.
• Cyber Bullying- a free collection of e-books from ebrary plus additional reports and documents to help better
understand, prevent and take action against this growing concern.
• Drug information website
o National Library of Medicine's Medline Plus
o Drugs.com
o PDRhealth
• Global Gateway: World Culture & Resources
• Google books
• Googlescholar.com
1. History sites with primary documents:
• AMDOCS: Documents for the study of American history.
• Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
• Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Colonial Latin America
• Teacher Oz’s Kingdom of History
2. Illinois Digital Archives- the Illinois State Library working with libraries, museums and historical societies in Illinois
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IFUGAO STATE UNIVERSITY – LAGAWE CAMPUS
Science, Technology and Society
provides this collection of materials related to Illinois history.
3. Internet Archive - a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.
4. Internet Archive for CARLI digitized resources
5. Internet Public Library
6. ipl2- a merger of Librarian’s Internet Index and Internet Public Library. Includes “Literary Criticisms”
7. Librarian’s Internet Index
8. Making of America- a digital library of primary sources in American social history.
9. Maps- from the University of Texas at Austin collection. Includes historical and thematic maps.
10. Nation Master- a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations.
11. Nursing sites:
• AHRQ (www.ahrq.gov)
• National Guidelines Clearinghouse (www.guideline.gov)
• PubMed (www.nlm.nih.gov)
12. Project Gutenberg - the first and largest single collection of free electronic books with currently over 20,000 e-
books available.
13. Shmoop - literature, US history and poetry information written primarily by PhD and masters students from top
universities like Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard and Yale.
14. StateMaster - a unique statistical database which allows you to research and compare a multitude of different data
on US.
15. Virtual Reference - selected web resources compiled by the Library of Congress.
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