VII.

THE INFORMATION AGE (GUTENBERG TO SOCIAL MEDIA)

Technology has the power to transform society. The most famous example of this is German craftsman
Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century.

THE INFORMATION AGE

The Information Age also known as Digital Age or New Media Age is the period of human history
typically described by the change from traditional industry to an economy based on information
computerization.

Before the rise of computers, Information was being spread using Print out materials. Johannes
Gutenberg, a German blacksmith and publisher who introduced movable type printing in Europe,
established what we called Gutenberg Era which is responsible for shaping the nature of society and its
underlying institutions.

In this period of time, where Gutenberg principle was formed and that principle is stated as the massive
distribution of information in an expensive manner because it is institutionalized.

THE Pre-GUTENBERG WORLD

During the time when printing press was not yet available, information could be processed in a tedious
manner. Books were written and produced by hand. They were made in surfaces of clay, wax, papyrus
and parchment.

The hand-produced books and other reading materials were restricted only to those people who can
afford to buy these materials, called as the “elite” group of people. Information was only relayed to
other through a word-of-mouth channels.

THE GUTENBERG REVOLUTION

It begun with the introduction of printing, specifically the movable printing press, by Gutenberg. His
principle existed in such a way that information could be passed on to every individual, but the access
was expensive. Books printed in the Gutenberg era were called incunabula (meaning cradle or
birthplace). This technology eventually diffused form Mainz to Subiaco in Italy, Paris and then London.
Most books that was first printed were that of religious texts of the medieval period that were initially
written in Latin but as time passed by, some books are written in local language which made them
available and understandable to common people. Scientific and geographic discoveries spread at a fast
rate as well as medical books were also published.

The rise of institutionalized and mediated channels was evident during this time and its best example
was the “media which can pass information through to people from all walks of life and this opened the
door to exceptional mass communications. But during this period of history, to distribute information to
a lot of listeners or viewers, one must have a ton of money at is was very costly. The unprecedented
discovery of printing press has contributed a lot to the world that was way impossible to books or
document written by hand making Johannes Gutenberg man of mystery.

THE POST-GUTENBERG WORLD

This era can be described as the emergence of the internet and the world wide web. This paved the way
to the possible uploading and downloading of all forms of media instruments such as video, audio, and
images. It enabled people to publish or spread the information.

THE RISE OF DIGITAL AGE

With the advent of modern technologies, printing press are not the only tools used in spreading
information. Nowadays, information is readily available to pass form on individual to another from here
to even faraway places.

COMPUTERS

Invented by Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and considered the “father of computers”.
This technology was designed for mathematical calculations and simple decision-making capabilities.
The main-frame computers were large room-sized computer that provide people data calculation and
manipulation faster than the human brain. Personal computers also available which gave every
individual access to computers.

THE INTERNET

Developed in California, US in the late 1960, the internet was mostly used by scientists to communicate
with other scientists. Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn are the people behind this marvelous piece of
technology. It was a government-controlled project until 1984 and its first countered problem in using it
was the speed. The development of Fiber-optics allowed the billions of bits of information to be
received every minute and a company named “Intel was one of the companies that developed faster
microprocessor like i5 and i7 that can process any data very quickly.

WORLD WIDE WEB

Commonly known as www was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist that started
in 1990, and it was basically for commercial purposes. Home pages were made by companies, business
owners or corporation in order to promote and sell their products and eventually, other items could be
purchased online giving ease to shopping. Similarly, online businesses can earn money through online
transactions.
ELECTRONIC MAIL OR E-MAIL

Several years back, it would take several days to receive a letter and it would also take a big amount of
money to contact and talk to someone very far away. Communication was made easier through E-mail,
the invention of which was controversially claimed by V.A Shiva Ayyadurai, an lndian-born American
scientist and entrepreneur. He started building the system in 1975 when he was 14 years old. The
copyright for the term E-mail was granted him in 1982. E-mail is an avenue by which messages are
exchanged between people from different locations at a faster rate.

FACEBOOK

A website launched in February 4, 2004 by a computer programmer, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg together
with his fellow students in Harvard college and with other roommates. The membership was first limited
to Harvard students but later, students in Boston area, lvy League College, and Stanford University were
allowed to get access to the website. Facebook is a social networking website where people could one
another and meet on line to share each other’s thoughts, ideas, experiences, photos, and videos which
they feel would be worth sharing. It can build relationships, can be used in business transactions and
could be a source of games.

TWITTER

Created in march 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Gass, Biz Tone, and Evan Williams. It is another networking
website where people post and interact with message or “tweets” which are restricted only for up to
140 characters and one of the visited websites and is considered the “SMS of the internet (Rice &
Barman-Adhikari, 2013).

MESSENGER

Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008 but changed its messaging service in 2010. An instant
messaging service and software application. This can be used to sent messages to other people through
written messages, voice calls or video calls. The latter could be in a one-to-one interaction or even in
group conversations (Hughes & Hans, 2017).

YouTube

Today’s on-line largest destination and the third most visited website. This website makes its way
through the social media via the tandem of Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. In 2005, during Valentine s day,
Hurley registered the logo and domain of Youtube. After three months, a small group of employees
launched the site www.youtube.com, one of the best ways to watch videos that can also be shared. It
contains videos about enormous aspects of life through this website.
GOOGLE

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both PhD students at Stanford University developed Google as a research
project in 1996. The domain google.com was registered in September 1997 and now the most used
search engine in the world Wide web. Lt offers us a variety of features beyond searching for words,
these may include synonyms or word meanings, time zones, maps, weather forecasts, sports scores,
calculations, etc., and also for research or journal articles as references for theses and dissertations.
Yahoo in Japan is one of the great competitors of Google.

INSTAGRAM

Created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in October 2010 is a fun photography application that is
gaining fame all over the globe. This can be used to enhanced and give style to your photo which can
later be shared with other using the same application. A user-friendly app but other apps could also
provide the same features.

The social media platforms mentioned above are the most commonly used platforms by people but
there are still other social media platforms which are the following:

 Blab  Snapchat
 hi5  Bing
 Houseparty  Xing
 LinkedlN  Flickr
 MyLite  Vimeo
 Meerkat  iTunes
 Periscope  MySpace
 Ning
 Plaxo

Their invention and use became a very significant part of economy and it gave great impact in the
workforce in many different ways. Workers who are not well-versed with automation are forced to look
for automated jobs and they also forced to compete globally competitive jobs and worse, some workerS
are being replaced by computers which can make the job much faster and which do not require
compensation. On lighter note, computerization has given much benefit to us. It resulted in high
productivity in the workplace. Nowadays, bills payment, bank transactions, online shopping, and the like
are much easier than without computers and internet.

From Gutenberg to Information Age, evolution of technology has made us realize that modernization of
information and communication process have become the power behind social evolution.