THE INFORMATION

AGE
INTRODUCTION

• Highly modernized, automated, data-driven and

technologically advanced—these best describe our
society nowadays, as evidence by how information
could be transferred or shared quickly. The different
areas of society have been influenced
tremendously such as communication, economics,
industry, health, and the environment. Despite our
gains due to the growing development of
information technology, the rapid upgrade of
information became effort
3000 BC-Sumerian writing system used
pictographs to represent words
2900 BC-Beginnings of Egyptian
hieroglyphic writing
1300 BC-Tortoise shell and oracle bone
writing were used
500 BC-Papyrus roll was used
220 BC-Chinese small seal writing was
developed
100 AD-Book (parchment codex)
105 AD-Woodblock printing and
paper was invented by the Chinese
1455-Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing
press using movable metal type
1755-Samuel Johnson's dictionary
standardized English spelling
1802-The Library of Congress was
established of the carbon arc lamp
Research on persistence of vision published
1824-Research on persistence of vision
published
1830s-First viable design for a digital computer
Augusta Lady Byron writes the world's first
computer program
1837-Invention of the telegraph in
Great Britain and the United States
1861-Motion pictures were projected
onto a screen
 1876-Dewey Decimal system was
introduced
1877-Eadweard Muybridge
demonstrated high-speed photography
1899-First magnetic recordings were
released
1902-Motion picture special effects
were used
1906-Lee DeForest invented the
electronic amplifying tube(triode)
1923-Television camera tube was
invented by Zvorkyn
1927-First practical sound movie
1939-Regularly scheduled television
broadcasting began in the US
1940s-Beginnings of information
science as a discipline
1945-Vannevar Bush foresaw the
invention of hypertext
1946-ENIAC computer was developed
1948-Birth of field-of-information
theory proposed by Claude E.Shanon
1957-Planar transistor was developed
by Jean Hoerni
1958-First integrated circuit
1960s-Library of Congress developed
LC MARC (machine- readable code)
1969-UNIX operating system was developed,
which could handle multitasking
1971-Intel introduced the first
microprocessor chip
1972-Optical laserdisc was developed
by Philips and MCA
1974-MCA and Philips agreed on a
standard videodisc encoding format
• As man evolved, information and its dissemination has
also evolved in many ways. Eventually, we no longer
kept them to ourselves; instead, we share them and
manage them in different means. Information got ahead
of us. It started to grow at a rate we were unprepared to
handle. Because of the abundance of information, it
was difficult to collect and manage them starting in the
1960s and 1970s. During the 1980s, real angst set in.
Richard Wurman called it "Information Anxiety." In the
1990s, information became the currency in the business
world. Information was the preferred medium of
exchange and the information managers served as
information officers. In the present generation, there is
no doubt that information has turned out to be a
commodity, an overdeveloped product, mass-produced,
and unspecialized. Soon, we become overloaded with it.
• Different authors have diverse, contrasting ideas on
the evolution of the Information Age. In spite of this,
we can still say that information is a very important
tool that helps improve our way of life. One thing is
for sure, the Information Age will continue to move
forward and far greater than our minds could
imagine.
 In his article "Truths of the Information Age" (n.d.),
Robert Harris detailed some facts on the Information Age.

1. Information must compete. There is a need for information to

stand out and be recognized in the increasing clutter.
2. Newer is equated with truer. We forgot the truth that any fact
or value can endure.
3. Selection is a viewpoint. Choose multiple sources for your
information if you want to receive a more balanced view of
reality.
4. The media sells what the culture buys. In other words,
information is driven by cultural priorities.
5. The early word gets the perm. The first media channel to
expose an issue often defines the context, terms, and attitudes
surrounding it.
6. You are what you eat and so is your brain. Do not
draw conclusions unless all ideas and information are
presented to you.
7. Anything in great demand will be counterfeited. The
demand for incredible knowledge, scandals, and secrets
is ever-present; hence, many events are fabricated by
tabloids, publicists, or other agents of information fraud.
8. Ideas are seen as controversial. It is almost certainly
impossible to make any assertion that will not find some
supporters and some detractors.
9. Undead information walks ever on. Rumors, lies,
disinformation, and gossips never truly die down. They
persist and continue to circulate.
10. Media presence creates the story. People behave
much differently from the way they would if being
filmed when the media are present, especially film
news or television media.
11. The medium selects the message. Television is
mainly pictorial, partially aural, and slightly textual, so
visual stories are emphasized: fires, chases, and
disasters.
12. The whole truth is a pursuit. The information that
reaches us is usually selected, verbally charged,
filtered, slanted, and sometimes, fabricated. What is
neglected is often even more important than what is
included.
Computer

• Computers are among the most important

contributions of advances in the Information
Age to society. A computer is an 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 (UShistory. org, 2017).
Types of Computer
1. Personal Computer (PC)
2. Desktop Computer
3. Laptops
4. Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)
5. Server
6. Mainframes
7. Wearable Computers
The World Wide Web
(Internet)
• Several historians trace the origin of the
Internet to Claude E. Shannon, an American
Mathematician who was considered as the
"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.
• The Internet is a worldwide system of
interconnected networks that facilitate data
transmission among innumerable
computers. It was developed during the
1970s by the Department of Defense. In case
of an attack, military advisers suggested the
advantage of being able to operate on one
computer from another terminal. In the early
days, the Internet was used mainly by
scientists to communicate with other
scientists. The Internet remained under
government control until 1984 (Rouse,
2014).
• One early problem faced by Internet users
was speed. Phone lines could only transmit
information at a limited rate. The
development of fiber-optic cables allowed
for billions of bits of information to be
received every minute. Companies like Intel
developed faster microprocessors so
personal computers could process the
incoming signals at a more rapid rate
(UShistory.org, 2017).
• 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.
After talking with family, friends, and other
investors into contributing $1 million, the
researchers launched their company in 1998.
Google is now the world's most popular search
engine, accepting more than 200 million
queries daily.
• Back then, new forms of communication were
also introduced. Electronic mail, or email, was
a suitable way to send a message to fellow
workers, business partners, or friends.
Messages could be sent and received.
• at the convenience of the individual. A letter
that took several days to arrive could be read
in minutes. Internet service providers like
America Online and CompuServe set up
electronic chat rooms. These were open
areas of cyberspace where interested parties
could join in a conversation with perfect
strangers. "Surfing the net" became a
pastime in and of itself (UShistory.org, 2017).
• Consequently, companies whose businesses
are built on digitized information have
become valuable and powerful in a relatively
short period of time; the current Information
Age has spawned its own breed of wealthy
influential brokers, from Microsoft's Bill
Gates to Apple's Steve Jobs to Facebook's
Mark Zuckerberg.
• Critics charged that the Internet created a
technological divide that increased the gap
between the members of the higher class
and lower class of society. Those who could
not afford a computer or a monthly access
fee were denied these possibilities. Many
decried the impersonal nature of electronic
communication compared to a telephone
call or a handwritten letter.
• On one hand, the unregulated and loose
nature of the Internet allowed pornography
to be broadcast to millions of homes.
Protecting children from these influences or
even from meeting violent predators would
prove to be difficult. Nowadays, crimes in
various forms are rampant because of the
use of social media. Cyberbullying is an issue
that poses alarm worldwide. Consequently,
we need to be aware of the possible harm
and damage due to abuse of these advances
in the Information Age.
 Applications of
Computers in Science
and Research
• One of the significant applications of
computers for science and research is
evident in the field of bioinformatics.
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 (Madan, n.d.).
• Early interest in bioinformatics was
established because of a need to create
databases of biological sequences. The
human brain cannot store all the genetic
sequences of organisms and this huge
amount of data can only be stored, analyzed,
and be used efficiently with the use of
computers.
• While the initial databases of protein
sequences were maintained at individual
laboratories, the development of a
consolidated formal database, known as
SWISS-PROT protein sequence database, was
initiated in 1986. It now has about 70,000
protein sequences from more than 5,000
model organisms, a small fraction of all
known organisms. The enormous variety of
divergent data resources is now available for
study and research by both academic
institutions and industries.
• Computers and software tools are widely used for
generating these databases and to identify the
function of proteins, model the structure of
proteins, determine the coding (useful) regions of
nucleic acid sequences, find suitable drug
compounds from a large pool, and optimize the
drug development process by predicting possible
targets. Some of the software tools which are
handy in the analysis include: BLAST (used for
comparing sequences); Annotator (an interactive
genome analysis tool); and Gene Finder (tool to
identify coding regions and splice sites) (Madan,
n.d.).
• The sequence information generated by the
human genome research, initiated in 1988, has
now been stored as a primary information
source for future applications in medicine. The
available data is so huge that if compiled in
books, the data would run into 200 volumes of
1,000 pages each and reading alone (ignoring
understanding factor) would require 26 years
working around the clock. For a population of
about five billion human beings with two
individuals differing in three million bases, the
genomic sequence difference database would
have about 15,000,000 billion entries.
• The present challenge to handle such huge
volume of data is to improve database design,
develop software for database access, and
manipulation and device data-entry procedures
to compensate for the varied computer
procedures and systems used in different
laboratories. The much-celebrated complete
human genome sequence which was formally
announced on the 26th of June 2000 involved
more than 500 x 1018 (500 million trillion)
calculations during the process of assembling the
sequences alone. This can be considered as the
biggest exercise in the history of computational
biology (Madan, n.d.).
• Moreover, from the pharmaceutical
industry's point of view, bioinformatics is the
key to rational drug discovery. It reduces the
number of trials in the screening of drug
compounds and in identifying potential drug
targets for a particular disease using high-
power computing workstations and software
like Insight. This profound application of
bioinformatics in genome sequence has led
to a new area in pharmacology-
Pharmacogenomics, where potential targets
for drug development are hypothesized from
the genome sequences.
• Molecular modeling, which requires a lot of
calculations, has become faster due to the
advances in computer processors and its
architecture (Madan, n.d.).
• In plant biotechnology, bioinformatics is
found to be useful in the areas of identifying
diseases resistance genes and designing
plants with high nutrition value (Madan,
n.d.).
How to Check the
Reliability of Web
Sources
• The Internet contains a vast collection of
highly valuable information but it may also
contain unreliable, biased information that
mislead people. The following guidelines can
help us check the reliability of web sources
that we gather. It is noteworthy to consider
and apply the following guidelines to avoid
misinformation. (Lee College Library, n.d.)
1. Who is the author of the article/site? How to
find out?
• Look for an "About" or "More About the Author"
link at the top, bottom, or sidebar of the
webpage. Some pages will have a corporate
author rather than a single person as an author. If
no information about the author(s) of the page is
provided, be suspicious.
• ✓ Does the author provide his or her credentials?
• ✓ What type of expertise does he or she have on
the subject he or she is writing about? Does he or
she indicate what his or her education is?
• ✓What type of experience does he or she
have? Should you trust his or her
knowledge of the subject?
• Try searching on the Internet for
information about the author.
• ✓ What kinds of websites are associated
with the author's name? Is he or she
affiliated with any educational institution?
• ✓ Do commercial sites come up? Do the
websites associated with the author give
you any clues to particular biases the author
might have?
2.Who published the site?
• How to find out?
• ✓ Look at the domain name of the website that will tell you who is
hosting the site. For instance, the Lee College Library website is:
http://www.lee.edu/ library. The domain name is "lee.edu." This tells
you that the library website is hosted by Lee College.
• ✓
• Search the domain name at http://www.whois.sc/. The site provides
information about the owners of registered domain names. What is the
organization's main purpose? Check the organization's main website, if
it has one. Is it educational? Commercial? Is it a reputable organization?
• ✓ Do not ignore the suffix on the domain name (the three-letter part
that comes after the "."). The suffix is usually (but not always)
descriptive of what type of entity hosts the website. Keep in mind that it
is possible for sites to obtain suffixes that are misleading. Here are some
examples:
• edu educational
• .com commercial
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? Is it regularly updated? Check for
dates at the bottom of each page on the site.
• Does the author cite sources? Just as in print
sources, web sources that cite their sources are
considered more reliable.
• What type of other sites does the website link
to? Are they reputable sites?
• 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
• 1. AFA e-Newsletter (Alzheimer's Foundation of
America newsletter)
• 2. American Memory the Library of Congress
historical digital collection.
• 3. Bartleby.com Great Books Online a collection of
free e-books including fictions, nonfictions,
references, and verses.
• 4. Chronicling America - search and view pages
from American newspapers from 1880-1922.
• 5. 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.
6. Drug information websites:
• National Library of Medicine's Medline Plus
• Drugs.com
• PDRhealth
• 7. Global Gateway: World Culture & Resources (from the
Library of Congress)
• 8. Google Books
• 9. Googlescholar.com
• 10. History sites with primary documents:
• AMDOCS: Documents for the study of American history
• Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
(Yale Law School)
• Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Colonial Latin America
• Teacher Oz's Kingdom of History
11. Illinois Digital Archives - the Illinois State Library
working with libraries, museums, and historical
societies in Illinois provides this collection of
materials related to Illinois history.
12. Internet Archive a digital library of Internet sites
and other cultural artifacts in digital form.
13. Internet Archive for CARLI digitized resources
14. Internet Public Library
15. ipl2 a merger of Librarians' Internet Index and
Internet Public Library. Special interest may include
the "Literary Criticisms" page which can be found
after clicking on the "Special Collections" link.
16. Librarians' Internet Index
17. Making of America American social history. a
digital library of primary sources in
18. Maps from the University of Texas at Austin
collection. Includes historical and thematic
maps.
19. NationMaster a massive central data source
and a handy way to graphically compare nations.
It is a vast compilation of data from such sources
as the CIA World Factbook, UN, and OECD.
20. Nursing sites:
• AHRQ (www.ahrq.gov)
• National Guidelines Clearinghouse
(www.guideline.gov)
• PubMed (www.nlm.nih.gov)
• 21. Project Gutenberg the first and largest
single collection of free electronic books with
currently over 20,000 e-books available.
22. Shmoop literature, US history, and poetry
information written primarily by PhD and masters
students from top universities like Stanford, Berkeley,
Harvard, and Yale.
23. State Master a unique statistical database which
allows you to research and compare a multitude of
different data on US states using various primary
sources such as the US Census Bureau, the FBI, and the
National Center for Educational Statistics. It uses
visualization technology like pie charts, maps, graphs,
and scatter plots to provide data.
24. Virtual Reference Library of Congress. selected web
resources compiled by the
 SUMMARY

• Nowadays, information could be shared or transferred

quickly. People are becoming more interested in sharing
information about themselves. Various aspects of our
society are also being influenced by the Information Age
especially communication, economics, industry, health, and
the environment. The rapid upgrade of information poses
both positive and negative impacts to our society. Therefore,
we need to carefully check our motives before disseminating
information and we also need to verify information before
believing them and using and sharing them. We should
share information that could help improve our lives and
others.