Technology

in the
Information
Age

CLAUDINE TUL-ID
 At the end of this lesson, the students
should be able to:

• Define Information Age;

• Discuss the history of information age; and

• Understand the factors that need to be considered in

checking website sources
What is INFORMATION?

• Knowledge communicated or obtained concerning a specific

fact or circumstance. (Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged
Dictionary)

• facts provided or learned about something or someone.

What is the Information Age?
 Very Fast Growth in COMMUNICATION and
INFORMATION Technology

1940s/50s
to
now
• A period starting in the last quarter of the 20th century
information became effortlessly accessible through publications
and through the management of information by computers and
computer networks.

• DIGITAL AGE

• NEW MEDIA AGE

• 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. Furthermore, the primary factors driving this
new age forward are convenience and user-friendliness which,
in turn, will create user dependence.

(James R. Messenger, Theory of Information Age, 1982)

HISTORY: Timeline of the Information Age
YEAR EVENT

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
YEAR EVENT
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
YEAR EVENT
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
Invention of the carbon arc lamp
1824 Research on persistence of vision
published
YEAR EVENT
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
YEAR EVENT
1877 Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated
high-speed photography
1899 First magnetic recordings were used
1902 Motion picture special effects
1906 Lee Deforest invented the electronic
amplifying tube (triode)
YEAR EVENT
1923 Television camera tube was invented
by Zworykin
1926 First practical sound movie
1939 Regularly scheduled television
broadcasting began in the US
1940s Beginnings of information science as
a discipline
YEAR EVENT
1945 Vannevar Bush foresaw the
invention of hypertext
1946 ENIAC computer was developed
1948 Birth of field-of-information theory
proposed by Claude E. Shannon
1957 Planar transistor was developed by
Jean Hoerni
YEAR EVENT
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
YEAR EVENT
1972 Optical laserdisc was developed by
Philips and MCA
1974 MCA and Philips agreed on a
standard videodisc encoding format
1975 Altair Microcomputer Kit was
released: first personal computer for
the public
1977 RadioShack introduced the first
complete personal computer
 YEAR EVENT
1984 Apple Macintosh computer was introduced
Mid 1980s Artificial intelligence was separated from
information science
1987 HyperCard was developed by Bill Atkinson
recipe box metaphor
1991 Four hundred fifty complete works of
literature on one CD-ROM was released
January RSA (encryption and network security
1997 software) Internet security code cracked for
a 48-bit number
Information Anxiety

• Human cost of information overload.

• In the words of Richard Saul Wurman (author of the

book 'Information Anxiety'), it is "produced by the
ever-widening gap between what we understand and
what we think we should understand. It is the black
hole between data and knowledge, and what happens
when information doesn't tell us what we want or need
to know."
Truths of the Information Age
1. Information must compete

2. Newer is equated with truer

3. Selection is a viewpoint

4. The media sells what the culture buys

5. The early word gets the perm

6. You are what you eat and so is your brain

7. Anything in great demand will be counterfeited

8. Ideas are seen as controversial

9.Undead information walks ever on

10.Media presence creates the story

11.The medium selects the message

12. The whole truth is a pursuit

Computers
 1950s-1970s
 Mainframe computing (Business & Colleges)

 1980s and 1990s

 Home computing

 2000s to present
 Wireless computing
 Computers are among the most important
contributions of advances in the Information 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.
Types of Computer
1. Personal Computer
• Single-user instrument
• Known as microcomputers since they were a computer but
built on a smaller scale
2. Desktop Computer
• PC that is not designed for portability
• Workstation: desktop computer that has a more powerful
processor, additional memory, and enhanced capabilities
for performing special groups of tasks.
3. Laptops
• Portable computers that integrate the essentials of a desktop
computer in a battery- operated package
4. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)
• Tightly integrated computers that usually have no
keyboards but rely on a touch screen for user input.
• Typically smaller than a paperback, lightweight, and
battery-powered
5. Server
• Computer that has been improved to provide
network services to other computers.
• Usually boast powerful processors, tons of memory,
and large hard drives.
6. Mainframes
• Huge computer systems that can fill an entire room.
• Used by large firms that process millions of
transactions every day
7. Wearable computers
• Materials that are usually integrated into cell phones,
watches, and other small objects or places.
• Perform common computer applications such as
databases, emails, multimedia, and schedules
World Wide Web (Internet)

ISOLATED >>
Computers went from being

to being able to COMMUNICATE with

each other
From Isolation to
Communication
Personal computers developed & networking advanced...

Internet
World Wide Web
Email
IM
SMS
• Claude E. Shannon – “Father of Information Theory”

• Internet – world wide system of interconnected networks that

facilitate data transmission among innumerable computers.
2001-2002
2003-2004
2005-2006
2007-2008
2009-2010
Moore’s Law
Technology DOUBLES every two years!
2
0 iMac Memory
Capacity

1
5

1
0

0
200 200 200 200 2011
3 5 7 9
 Storage

*How we save data and

information
1950s - 1970s

Punch Cards
 1980s

Floppy Discs
1990s

CDs and DVDs

Today

Digital Files
.mp3
.mov

.m4v .flv
Information and Power
in our Hands
Applications of Computer in
Science and Research
• Bioinformatics
 Application of information technology to store,
organize, and analyze vast amount of biological
data.

• SWISS-PROT protein sequence database

 development of a consolidated formal database
which was initiated in 1986
 70, 000 protein sequences from more than 5, 000
model organism, a small fraction of all known
organisms.
• Rational drug discovery

• Plant biotechnology
 Bioinformatics is found to be useful in the areas of
identifying diseases resistances genes and designing
plants with high value
How to check the Reliability of
Web Sources
1. Who is the author of the article/site?
2. Who published the site?
 .edu – educational
 .com – commercial
 .mil – military
 .gov – government
 .org - noprofit
3. What is the main purpose of the site? Why did the author
write it and why did the publisher post it?
4. Who is the intended audience?
5. What is the quality of information provided on the
website?
 Examples of Useful and
Reliable Web Sources

o AFA e-Newsletter (Alzheimer’s Foundation of America

newsletter)

o American Memory – the Library of Congress historical

digital collection.

o Bartleby.com Great Books Online – a collection of free

e-books including fictions, nonfictions, references, and
verses.
o Chronicling America – search and view pages from
American newspapers from 1880-1922

o Cyber Bullying – free collection of e-books from

ebrary plus additional reports and documents to
help better understand, prevent and take action
against this growing concern.

o Drug information websites:

o National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus
o Drugs.com
o PDRhealth

o Global Gateway: World Culture & Resources (from

the Library of Congress
o Google Books

o Googlescholar.com

o History sites with primary documents

o AMDOCS: Documents for the study of

American history
o Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History
and Diplomacy (Yale Law School)
o Internet Modern History Sourcebook:
Colonial Latin America
o Teachers Oz’s Kingdom of History
o Internet Archive – a digital library of Internet sites and
other cultural artifacts in digital forms

o Internet Archive for CARLI digitized resources

o Internet Public Library

o Ipl2

o Librarians’ Internet Index

o Making of America

o Maps
o Nation Master

o Nursing Sites
o AHRQ (www.ahrq.gov)
o National Guidelines Clearinghouse (www.guideline.gov
)
o PubMed (www.nlm.nih.gov)

o Project Gutenberg

o Shmoop

o StateMaster

o Virtual Reference
Questions?