Republic of the Philippines

WESTERN MINDANAO STATE UNIVERSITY

Pagadian Campus
Pagadian City

Outline for Science, Technology and Society

Chapter 3: Lesson 1- Specific Issues in Science, Technology and Society
GROUP 6
Members:
 Gabrinez , Chariz
 Kadatuan, Zarina M.
 Napata, Joevelyn T.
 Ursabia, Gyra R.
 Ventura, Miechel D.

The Information Age (Reporter: Kadatuan)

According to Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, information is “knowledge
communicated or obtained concerning a specific fact or circumstance.” Hence,
information is a very important tool for survival. So, how can we really define information
age?
 The Information Age is defined as a “period starting in the last quarter of the 20 th
century when information became effortlessly accessible through publications
and through the management of information by computers and computer network
(Vocabulary. com. n. d).
 Also called the Digital Age and the New Media because it was associated with
the development of computers.
 According to James R. Messenger who proposed the Theory of information age
in 1972 “the information age is a true new age based upon the interconnection of
computers via telecommunications, with these information systems operating on
both 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”
History and Emergence of Information Age
Table 1. Timeline of Information Age
Date Event
3000 B.C. Sumerian writing system uses pictographs to represent words.
2900 Beginnings of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.
1300 Tortoise shell and oracle bone writing were used.
500 Papyrus roll was used
220 Chinese small seal writing developed.
100 A.D. Book (parchment codex).
105 Wood-block printing and paper is invented by the Chinese.
1455 Johann Gutenberg invents printing press using movable metal type.
1755 Samuel Johnson's dictionary standardizes English spelling.
 The Library of Congress is established.
1802
 Invention of the carbon arc lamp.
1824 Research on persistence of vision published.
 First viable design for a digital computer.
1830s
 Augusta Lady Byron writes world's first computer program.
1837 Invention of telegraph in Great Britain and the United States.
1861 Motion pictures projected onto a screen.
1876 Dewey Decimal system introduced.
1877 Edward Muybridge demonstrates high-speed photography.
1899 First magnetic recordings were released

20th Century
1902 Motion picture special effects.
1906 Lee De Forest invents electronic amplifying tube (triode).
1923 Television camera tube invented by Zvorkyn.
1926 First practical sound movie.
1939 Regularly scheduled television broadcasting begins in the U.S.
1940s Beginnings of information science as a discipline.
1945 Vannevar Bush foresees the invention of hypertext.
1946 ENIAC computer developed.
1948 Birth of field-of-information theory proposed by Claude E. Shannon.
1957 Planar transistor developed by Jean Hoerni.
1958 First integrated circuit.
1960s Library of Congress develops LC MARC (machine readable code).
1969 UNIX operating system developed, which could handle multitasking.
1971 Intel introduces first microprocessor chip.
1972 Optical laserdisc developed by Philips and MCA.
1974 MCA and Philips agree on standard videodisc encoding format.
1975 Altair Microcomputer Kit: first personal computer for the public.
1977 RadioShack introduces first complete personal computer.
1984 Apple MacIntosh computer introduced.
Mid-'80s Artificial intelligence separates from information science.
1987 Hyper card developed by Bill Atkinson recipe box metaphor.
1991 Four hundred fifty complete works of literature on one CD-ROM.
RSA (Encryption and network security software) Internet security code
Jan. 1997
cracked for a 48-bit number.

Figure 1. Evolution of Man and Information

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. This is what Richard Wurman called as “Information Anxiety”.
What is Information Anxiety?
 In the words of Richard Saul Wurman (author of the book of ‘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.
 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.
The following is a sampler, detailed facts on the Information Age from an article by
Robert Harris, "Truths of the Information Age".
1. Information must compete. There is a need for information to stand out and be
recognized in the increasing clutter, the data smog, that surrounds us.
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
defines the context, terms, and attitudes surrounding it.
6. You are what you eat and so is your brain. Do not draw conclusions unless al
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, mny 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 that what is included.
Computer (Reporter: Ursabia)
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 (US history. org, 2017).

Types of Computer
 Computers are associated with numerous terms and descriptions. Most people
suggest the dimensions, intended use, or the computer's power. While the term
"computer" can apply to virtually any device that has a microprocessor in it, most
people think of a computer as a device that receives input from the user through
a mouse (hand-guided directions tool) or keyboard, processes it in some
fashion, and presents the result on a screen.
1. Personal Computer (PC)
It is a single-user instrument. PCs were first known as
microcomputers since they were a complete computer but built on a smaller
scale than the enormous systems operated by most businesses.

2. Desktop Computer
It is described with as a PC desktop that is not that designed it will
be for set up in a permanent spot. A workstation is simply a desktop computer
that has a more powerful processor, additional memory, and enhanced
capabilities for performing special group of tasks, such as 3D graphics or game
development. Most desktops offer more storage, power, and versatility than their
portable versions (UShistory.org, 2017).

3. 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. They are commonly called notebooks.

4. Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).

These are tightly integrated computers that usually have no
keyboards but rely on a touch screen for user input. PDAs are typically smaller
than a paperback, lightweight, and battery powered (UShistory.org, 2017).

5. Server
It refers to a computer that has been improved to provide network
services to other computers. Servers usually boast powerful processors, tons of
memory, and large hard drives (UShistory.org, 2017).

6. Mainframes.
These are huge computer systems that can fill an entire room. They
are used especially by large firms to describe the large, expensive machines that
process millions of transactions every day. The term "mainframe" has been
replaced by enterprise server. Although some supercomputers are single
computer systems, most comprise multiple, high-performance, parallel
computers working as a single system (UShistory.org, 2017).

7. Wearable Computers
They involve materials that are usually integrated into cell phones,
watches, and other small objects or places. They perform common computer
applications such as databases, email, multimedia, and schedulers
(UShistory.org, 2017).

THE WORLD WIDE WEB (Internet) (Reporter: Napata)

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 quantitavely encoded as a
sequence of ones and zeroes.
• Internet is a worldwide system of interconnected networks that facilitate data
transmission among innumerable computers. Internet was used mainly by
scientists to communicate with other Scientists. 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.

What are the contributions of WWW (World Wide Web)?

 The world wide web opened up the internet to everyone, not just scientists. It
connected the world in a way that made it much easier for people to get
information, share, and communicate. It has since allowed people to share their
work and thoughts through social networking sites, blogs, video sharing, and
more.
 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 melting violent predators would prove to be difficult.
 The Internet is very much useful in our daily routine tasks. For example, it helps
us to see our notifications and emails. Apart from this, people can use the
internet for money transfers, shopping order online food, etc.

APPLICATION OF COMPUTERS IN SCIENCE AND RESEARCH (Reporter:

Gabrinez )
BIOINFORMATICS- 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)
SWISS-PROT protein sequence database -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.
Computers and software tools are widely used for generating these
databases and to identify the functions 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 Annotator GeneFinder

-The sequence information generated by the human genome research,
initiated in 1988, has now been stored as a primary information source for future
application 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.
-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.
PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY -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.
PHARMACOGENOMICS -Where potential targets for drug development are
hypothesized from the genome sequences.
Molecular modeling has become faster due to the advances in computer
processors and its architecture
.PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY- Bioinformatics is found to be useful in areas of
identifying diseases resistance genes and designing plants with high nutrition
value.

HOW TO CHECK THE REABILITY OF WEB SOURCES (Reporter: Ventura)

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.
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 info 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/she have on the subject he/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 kinds of websites are associated with the author’s name? Is
he/she affiliated with any educational institutions?
 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 sites provides
info 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 that 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
.mil=military
.gov=government
.org=nonprofit
3. What is the main purpose of the site? Why did the author write
why 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 info on a topic?
 To persuade you of a particular pov?

4. Who is the intended audience?

 Scholars or the general public?
 Which age group is it written for?
 Is it aimed at people from the 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?
 Timelines: 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 (Reporter: Kadatuan)

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 PDR health
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 - a digital library of primary sources in American social
history.
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. StateMaster - 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- selected web resources compiled by the Library of
Congress.
References :

Harris, R. (n.d.). "Truths of the Information Age." Accessed February 25, 2023 .
http://www.virtualsalt.com/infotrue.htm.
Illinois Valley Community College. (n.d.). "List of useful and reliable web sources."
Accessed February 25, 2023.
https://www.ivcc.edu/ library.aspx?id=4038.
Lee College Library. (n.d.). "How Can I Tell if a Website is Reliable?" Accessed March
2, 2023.
https://www.edb.utexas.edu/petrosino/ Legacy Cycle/mf
jm/Challenge%201/website%20reliable.pdf.
Madan, M. (n.d.). "Bioinformatics-an aid for biological research." Accessed March 2,
2023.
http://www.mre-Imb.cam.ac.uk/ genomes madanm/articles/bioinfo.htm.
Messenger, J. R. (1982). "The Theory of the Information Age." Accessed March 5,
2023.
http://www.informationage.org/briefhistory. html.
Rouse, M. (2014). "Information Age." Accessed February 27, 2023.
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/Information-Age.
United States American History. (n.d.). "The Information Age timeline." Accessed
February 26, 2017.
http://u-s-history.com/ pages/h3974.htm.
USHistory.org. (n.d.). "Living in the Information Age." Accessed February 26, 2017.
http://www.ushistory.org/us/60d.asp.
Vocabulary.com. (n.d.). "Information Age." Accessed February 26, 2017.
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/information%20 age.