LESSON 2: ICT Development

The inventions of the printing press in 1440 century by Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith from the town of
Mainz in Germany, stands as the most significant event that launched a new social order. It would later on be
known as the Gutenberg press.
However, the history of printing stretches as far back as the third century when textiles became the first
surface from where words were inscribed. By the fifth century, parts of East Asia used a technique called
woodblock printing wherein the printer would carve drawings and characters into a flat block of wood, ink the
wood, then transfer the images by pressing them into a surface of cloth or parchment.
In 1000s, Bi Sheng invented the movable type technology where each character (or letter, in the context of
Western syllabary) is carved or cast in hardened clay. These characters are rearranged as they are inked on
(hence the term “movable” type), then pressed against parchment or vellum. In 1337, a Korean monk named
Baegun invented a metal movable type technology to produce a book titled Jikiji, which contained Buddhist
texts collected from various monks and teachers.
In Europe during the Medieval period, only the clergy had access to books. Latin was the language of
scholars, but the great majority of masses in Europe did not speak it so the roads to knowledge and
information were close to them.
Gutenberg demonstrated the possibilities of the movable type technology. He combined tin, lead, and
antimony so that the alloy could melt at low temperature, making it more pliant for molding. The mirror image
of each letter was carved on a small metal block. By 1452, Gutenberg began working on the two-volume
Gutenberg bible which he completed in 1455.
The technology for the printing press spread rapidly and by onset of the 16 th century, some European city
had already acquired the means to produce books and other printed materials. Most notable was the
Venetian printer Aldus Manutius (1945-1515) who founded the Aldine Press in Venice, a city in the
northwestern part of Italy. The rise of printing press fueled the growth of publishing. For the first time, the
masses where were able to afford books. Printing stimulated the production of the ideas and the
dissemination of information which, in turn, propelled the advancement of science and technology as well as
the arts and humanities.
Printing encourage the rise of literacy by giving the masses the desire to know how to read and write a skill
that was one denied to them and made available only to the clergy. The demand for books grew and readers
demanded more variety Almanacs, travel books, stories of chivalry, and romance, poetry, and music were just
some of the genres that developed in the first 100 years of printing. Washington Post columnist Robert J.
Samuelson captured the vast changes that ushered in as a result of the invention of printing. “Gutenberg’s
press led to mass literacy, fostered the Protestant Reformation (by undermining the clergy’s theological
monopoly) and through the easy exchange of information, enable scientific revolution.”
The Industrial Revolution, which transpired from the 1750 to 1850, brought unprecedented developments
in agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, and technology. Factories sprouted in many places and
continued to grow in number technology became a defining feature of workplace, enabling machines that
would speed up the process of production and increase its output. The technology that initially governed the
printing press eventually developed to accommodate these changes. In 1798, the French developed a machine
that could handle continuous roll of paper. Meanwhile, in Germany 1811, steam power was integrated into
the machine, a feature that the Americans would improve on through the rotary press. The American
newspaper Baltimore Sun became one the early users of this high-speed machine. It was also during this time
that the first “pictorial” weekly newspapers emerged, featuring photographs and illustrations of events
alongside the news.

Electronic Communication
The rise of electronic communications took off from the invention of the telegraph in 1839 by Samuel Morse
(1791-1872). The electrical telegraph system transmitted information via electric cables laid over several
stations. Morse came up with a code composed of dots and dashes to signify words and numbers.
Radio broadcasting emerged from this pioneering technology. After the invention of the Morse Code, an
Italian scientist named Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) became interested in sending free messages using
electric waves or frequencies. The British empire saw the value of this technology and supported or financing
so of the Macaroni Company so it can render services to the commercial and military ships of England, the
United States, and other countries.
In the eve of Christmas 1906, Canadian-born inventor Reginald Fessenden (1866-1932)surprised ships
traveling through the Antarctic ocean when he broadcasted not just dots and dashes buy music played from a
phonograph. The sailors were thrilled. This development gave rise to what would be known as radiotelephony.
By 1907, American inventor Lee De Forest (1973-1961) invented and patented the vacuum tube that could
take weak electrical signals and amplify it, making transmissions clearer through speaker systems. It took more
than two decades for the full potential of radio broadcasting to transmit news, music, and all forms of
information, education, and entertainment.
Along with the invention of vacuum tube, the electronic television is develop during the cathode-ray
oscilloscope technology develop by German scientist Karl Braun (1850-1918) in 1897. Two decades later,
Russian scientist Vladimir Zworykin (1889-1982) invented an improved cathode ray tube called the kinescope.
American scientist Philo Farnsworth (1906-1971) develop the television comprised of 60 horizontal lines.
Meanwhile, Hungarian-born inventor Louis Parker in turn invented the modern television receiver responsible
for synchronizing the picture and audio transmission of a unit.
After World War II, Television became even more popular and production of programs increased. In the
United States, television networks expanded and consolidated their capital to usher in a golden age of
television that saw the rise of many entertainment genres, notably drama and comedy.
In the Philippines television was introduced in 1946 after James Lindenberg began assembling transmitters
for the Bolinao Electronics Corporation. However, his initiatives were halted by strict import controls, with the
authority claiming that the dollars spent on importing raw, materials were better spent on more essential
items, given the damages that resulted from the war. The first commercial telecast came in 1953 when
Antonio Quirino, the brother of President Elpidio Quirino, took out resources from Lindenber’s project to open
DZAQ-TV derived from his initials. Televisions sets had to be imported mostly from US. In 1956, ownership for
DZAQ-TV was transferred to the Lopezes and rename Chronicle Broadcasting System, the forerunner of
today’s broadcast giant, the ABS-CBN Corporation.
FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL
These technological breakthroughs have dramatically altered communications and information dissemination.
In 1943, the first electronic computer was created. Like the television sets, it used the vacuum tube
technology. In the 1970s, the microprocessor was invented by Ted Hoff together with his colleagues from
Silicon Valley. Microprocessor are the heart of every computer in the same way that the engine is the heart of
a vehicle. It is a computational engine packed on a single integrated circuit carrying all the computing
functions of the computer, such as accepting data as input, processing according to instructions stored in the
memory, and providing the result as output.
During the cold war, scientist s and researchers developed a tool that enabled military institutions to
communicate and share data with one another. As the Soviet Union launched its first satellite into outer
space, America and its allies became restless, believing that they were lagging behind science and technology.
As a response, scholars from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led by J.C.R. Licklider (1915-1990),
proposed a network of computers that could communicate in the event that phone lines are destroyed by a
Soviet attack. The proposal was conveyed through a series of memoranda that spoke of an “intergalactic
computer network.” Scientists soon developed the packet-switching technology, which enabled one computer
to send information to another, as data are parsed into packets or units before transmission.
This paved the way to the creation of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), which was
funded by the defense department of the United States and designed to provide immediate communication in
the event of war. Computers were installed at US universities that tackled defense-related projects. Later on,
it was introduced to allied organizations such as the National Science Foundation. It also expanded to include
other educational institutions outside of the US, notably the London University and the Royal Radar
Establishment in Norway. By 1990, the Internet had already taken over the ARPANET. From universities and
government institutions, it was later on fully migrated to commercial establishments and homes.
The Internet was derived by abbreviating the word “inter-network” because that is exactly what it is, a
network of computers spread across the globe. However, developments in the past decade enabled the
expansion of the network to include mobile phones, tablets, smart televisions, video game consoles, and other
electronic devices. The extent of the Internet’s use grows dramatically each passing year. Its functions are as
follows:
 access a huge archive of information from an infinite number of websites around the world that make
up the World Wide Web;
 send and receive e-mail messages;
 hold video meetings and conferences;
 attend seminars through web-organized events called webinars;
 share video clips and photographs;
 engage in online businesses and transactions;
 watch movies on video streaming websites;
 catch up on television programs;
 gather educational resources through open learning systems;
 obtain a vocational certificate or even a college degree using the facilities of online and distance
education; and
 meet new friends and connect with old ones using social media platforms
Analog versus Digital Technology
One thing that sets apart computer technology from other technologies that we discussed earlier is that it is
digital. While analog technologies combine sound and light waves in the transmission process, digital
technologies compress the data into zeroes and ones, which are called binary.
Each numerical place in the system is called a bit. Bits take up space and space also takes time to move from
one device to another. A collection of bits can be described and counted. For example, bits make up the pixels
that in turn make up a digital image. The more pixels there are, the better resolution the digital image has.
This means that even if it is enlarged, it does not lose its clarity. Digital technology is now associated with the
advent of computers. This has led to various innovations, such as banking across national borders, open and
distance learning, artificial intelligence, and the rise of computer robots, among others.

HISTORY OF COMPUTERS: From symbolic writing to microprocessors

Computers and other electronic gadgets have a critical role in every area of human life. Though viewed as
modern-day inventions, the history of computers goes back as many decades ago.
From those counting boards emerge the abacus, a device which was used for addition and subtraction, and
the related operations of multiplication and division. The term abacus derives from the Greek word abas
meaning table. It is generally assumed that the abacus originated in the Middle East somewhere in the Early
Middle Ages, which could be from the fifth to sixth century.
After a hundreds of years the need for advanced counting devices compelled many scientists to develop
machines that could handle huge amounts. Three individuals whose visions spurred the development of
computing machines are Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), and Charles
Babbage (1791-1871).
Pascal developed a counting machine that used gears. Numbers could be entered and cumulative sums
obtained by pushing the handles downward, much like that of a machine. It can only add but not subtract and
this limitations enabled other inventions.
Leibniz closely studied Pascal’s designs and introduced changes so he can produce a machine that could
multiply. His invention consisted of a set up mechanism to enter the digits of the multiplicand, a handle to
crank for each digit of the multiplier, a result register, and a system of gears to do the computation.
In 1890, Hernan Hollerith (1860-1920) invented the electromechanical punched card tabulator that further
developed punched card technology, allowing it to assist in processing and summarizing data. The machine
became very useful in counting. Later on, Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company that was
eventually renamed to International Business Machines, more commonly known as IBM. He is regarded as the
father of modern day computing. The punched card technology dominated computing for almost half a
century.
Electronic Age
The electronic age of computers was divided into several generations, each exhibiting a unique development
that paved the way to the succeeding era of computer development.
In 1936, British mathematician Alan Turing developed what is now known as the Turing machine which is
designed to illustrate the extent and limits of what can be computed. Known as the father of computer
science, Turing was interested in the question of what it means for a task to be computable.
Computers produced in the early phase of the electronic era were extremely large because these used
magnetic drums for memory and vacuum tubes as switches. These produced so much heat that large cooling
units were used to bring down the temperature. In 1937, John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry invented the
first electronic digital computer called Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC).
Computer history can be summed up in five generations based on when major technological developments in
computers occurred.
First generation (1940-1956)
This period saw the use of vacuum tubes as processors. Vacuum tubes were large, taking a lot of space,
resulting in computers that were so huge, they almost always occupy a big space in the room. Military
operations during the World War || gave rise to a computer named Colossus. Meanwhile, in 1946, the
Electronic Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was built. This huge computer used more than 18,000 vacuum
tubes for its processes. Computers of this first generation were limited to single tasks. The idea of a
multitasking computer was not yet a possibly then.
Second Generation (1957-1963)
Transistor replaced vacuum tubes. In 1951, the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) was launched,
making it the first commercial computer. Meanwhile, in 1953, IBM, computers were being sold in the market,
becoming the first publicly listed company to make a name in the computer industry. Other auxiliary software
were developed, such as programming languages and operating systems. Storage was improved with the rise
of tapes and disks as well as printers to generate the output of data processing. By 1957, IBM through its
engineer John Backus developed a high level programming language now known as FORTRAN, designed to
serve the needs of the scientific community.
IBM, now a leader in the computer industry, began to make more strides with the release of more developed
computer systems, such as the IBM 7090 that used transistors as switching devices.
Third Generate (1964-1971)
Third generate computers used integrated circuits and were considerably smaller than its predecessors.
Transistor were miniaturized and placed into silicon chips to provide accelerated processing capacity and
efficiency. Users interacted with keyboards and monitors instead of punched cards. Computers were governed
by an operating system software that allowed many tasks to be performed at the same time. For the first time,
computers began to be sold en masse to a captive market.
Fourth Generation (1972-2010)
From integrated circuits, computers are able to function using microprocessors which are computer
processors on a silicon chips. In 1981, Intel developed the Intel 4004 chip which found all the vital components
of a computer on a single chip. In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh. It was during these times that the
home computer became more popular. As these small computers became more powerful, they could now be
linked together to form networks, thus ushering the development of the Internet.
Fifth Generation (2011-present)
Fifth generation computers now employ artificial intelligence such as voice recognition. Computers can now
understand spoken words and imitate human reasoning. Using various sensors, it can respond to its users
mimicking the actions of human.
THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
As early as 1962, Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) already predicted that electronics would be crucial to the rise
of the global village. Today, the term is a popular idiom that has entered everyday language.
The global village is a metaphor for an interconnected world where the traditional barriers of time and space
no longer exist. Through media such as the Internet, the telephone, and the television, people around the
world are linked together: communicating with other side of the world can happen as quickly as it takes us to
contact someone who inhabits the same physical space.
INFORMATION OVERLOAD
As early as 1970, Alvin Toffler (1928-2016), a celebrated author, popularized the term information overload.
For Toffler, it happens when a person faces a crisis in the decision making in the presence of too much
information. In the book The Future Shock, Toffler wrote “just as the body cracks under the strain of
environmental overstimulation, the ‘mind’ and its decision processes behave erratically when overloaded’.
In the globalized world, information is readily available and is channeled through the Internet and other
multimedia platforms such as cable televisions and video on-demand services. Gadgets such as mobile phones,
laptop, and tablet computers enable the accessibility of such information. Technological developments are
advancing every moment.

Assessment Activity
A. Matching Type
Match column A with column B. Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper.
A. B
1. Voice recognition Web 2.0
2. Alvin Toffler ARPANET
3. Facebook digital
4. Military first generation computers
5. Vacuum tubes information overload
B. Essay
Write a reflection paper on how Web 2.0 has enabled and enriched your connections with family,
friends and community.
C. Pick a global issue, perhaps a wide-ranging problem that affects a large part of the globe. After
choosing the issue, reflect on these questions:
1. As a resident of the global village, are you able to influence the way the issue is viewed and articulated?
Explain.
2. How do you see yourself participating using ICT tools to help articulate, clarify, or resolve the issue?
3. After answering these questions, reflect on the idea of a global village.