ICT Development

The invention of the printing press in 1440 century to Johannes Gutenbera a goldsmith from
the town of Maing in Gestun Mamase the mont, slanifi cant event that launched a new social
order. It would later 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 described. By the century, parts of East
Asia used a technique called woodblock printing when the printer would carve drawings and
characters into a flat block of wood, ink the wood. transfer the images by pressing them
In 1000s, Bi Sheng invented the movable type technology cloth or parchment 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 1377, a Korean monk named Burgun 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 closed 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. The letter
blocks were then moved to form and print the words. 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 the onset of the fifth century,
some European cities had already acquired the means to produce books and other printed
materials. Most notable was the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius (1449-1515) 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 were able to afford books.
Printing stimulated the production of ideas and the dissemination of information which, in
turn, propelled the advancement of science and technology as well as the arts and
humanities. Printing encouraged the rise of literacy by giving the masses the desire to know
how to read and write a skill that was once 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, enabled the scientific revolution."

The Industrial Revolution, which transpired from 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 a continuous roll of paper. Meanwhile, in Germany around 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 of 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 the financing of The Marconi 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 but 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 (1873-1961) 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 fall 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 was developed using the
cathode ray oscilloscope technology developed by German scientist Karl Braun (1850-1918)
in 1897. Two decades later, Russian scientist Vladimir Zworykin (1880-1982) invented an
improved cathode ray tube called the kinescope. American scientist Philo Farnsworth
(1906-1971) developed the television comprised of 60 horizontal lines. Meanwhile,
Hungarian-born inventor Lonis Parker in turn invented the modern television receiver
responsible for synchronizing the picture and andio transmission of a unit.

After World War II, television became even more popular and production of programas
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 authorities 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 Lindenberg's project to open
DZAQ-TV derived from his initials. Television sets had to be imported mostly from the US. In
1956, ownership for DZAQ-TV was transferred to the Lopezes and renamed 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 micropro-cessor was
invented by Ted Hoff together with his colleagues from Silicon Valley. Microprocessors 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 a computer, such as accepting data as input, processing according to
instructions stored in the memory, and providing the results as output.

During the cold war, scientists 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 communi-cate in the
event that phone lines are destroyed by a Soviet attack. The proposal 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 depart-ment 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
institu-tions outside of the US. notably the London University and the Royal Radar Estab
lishment 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, devel-opments 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 also take time to
move from one device to another. A collection of bits can be described and counted. For
example, hits make up the pixels that in turn make up a digital Mare. 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.
It all started with counting machines. The first machine could have been the counting board
and was invented when someone had the idea of placing small objects such as pebbles in
columns marked on a flat surface and assigning on order of units to the objects in each
column. Later, loose objects in columns were replaced with beads that could slide along
parallel rods.

From those counting hoards emerge the abacus, a device which was used for addition and
subtraction, and the related operations of multiplication and division. The term abocus
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 hundreds of years, the need for advanced counting devices compelled many scientists
to develop machines that could handle huge amounts. Three individuals whose visions
spumed 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 mechanical
cash machine. It con only add but not subtract and this limitation 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 setup 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 1679, Leibniz created a system that did not use the full range of numbers in the number
line Instead, it used just two: 0 and 1; he called this code binary. It was inspired by an
abscure Indian aufior named Pingala, who wrote The Science of Meters in 300 BCE.

The first programmable computing device was the Difference Engine, developed by British
polymath Chorles Babbage. He presented a partial version of the concept in 1822 to the
Royal Astronomical Society of England with a paper titled "Note on the application of
machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables." He continued
developing the machine, often with the aid of colleagues. Today, the Difference Engine No.
2-a more odvanced version of the original Difference Engine is displayed at the London
Science Museum

Swedish inventor and publisher Pehr Georg Scheutz (1785-1873) worked with his son
Edvard to develop another counting machine, building on the gains made by Babbage's
invention. The dun linished their prototype by 1834. Meanwhile in 1801, the Frenchman
Joseph Marie Jacquard invented o power loom that could base its weave (and hence the
design on the fabric) upon a patern automatically read from punched wooden cards, all held
together in a long row by rope

Babbage also believed that punched cards are capable of receiving numbers, compiling
Sequences, and providing instructions on what to do with these numbers in 1842,
mathematician Ado Lovelace 11815-1852) labaited on the idea of feeding punch cards into
an analytical engine to oddress a specific calculation

1890, Hemon Hollenth (1840-1920) invented the electromechanical punched card tabulator
mor further developed punched card technology, allowing it to assist in processing and
summarizing data. The machine became very useful in accounting. Later on, Hollerith
founded the Tabulating Machine Company that was eventutiily 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 phose 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 longe cooling urilts were used to bring down the lemperature. In 1937, John
V. Atanasaff and Clifford Berry invented the first electronic digital computer called
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC).

Computer history can be summed up in live 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 II gave rise to a computer
named Colossus. Meanwhile, in 1946, the Electronic Numerical 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 possibility then.

Second Generation (1957-1963)

Transistors replaced vacuum tubes. In 1951, the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC)
WOS lounched, making it the first commercial computer. Meanwhile, in 1953, IBM
computers were being solid in the market, becoming the first publicly listed company to
make a name in the computer industry Offher auxiliary softwares 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 doo processing. By 1957, IBM
through its engineer John Backus developed a high-level programming nguage 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 Generation (1964-1971)

Third generation computers used integrated circuits and were considerably smaller than its
predecesso Gransistors were miniaturized and placed into silicon chips to provide
accelerated processing capach uns efficiency Users interacted with keyboards and monitors
instead of punched cards. Computers ware governed box on operating system software that
allowed many tasks to be performed at the same time For the list 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. It captures how digital technology has obliter-ated the barriers of time
and space. Mass media, travel, and electronic communica-tions now make it easier for
people to connect and communicate.

His insights were revolutionary at the time, using the phrase global embrace to signify that
everyone can be within reach, that people thrive best in communities, and that
communication technologies make it possible that experiences and events in one part of the
globe can be shared even experienced in another part of the globe. The image of a village is
important because it expresses that communication can be carried on as if one was living
next door or next street, or perhaps a trek away. Villages are traditionally known as clusters
of residential settlements. Physical proximity allows its residents to interact in various ways
and to converge with others when performing economic, political, and social activities. They
form village associ-ations and interest groups, deliberate and work around a consensus, rally
around communicate. common interests, and promote the common good.

"Global Village" captures how digital technology has obliterated the barriers of time and
space. Mass media, travel, and electronic communications make it easy for people to
connect and

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 the other side of
the world can happen as quickly as it takes us to contact someone who inhabits the same
physical space. The facilities of the Internet bridge cities, provinces, countries, and cultures.
Online journalism has made the transmission of news faster. Social media has enabled the
creation of online communities, promoting a robust exchange of public opinion that serves
the ends of democracy. Through the World Wide Web. information is readily available to
anyone who can access the Internet. Television has transcended the borders of the
nation-state, and cell phone technology makes communication between families and friends
even faster. McLuhan argued that it is the speed of electronic media, carried out through a
complex network of cables and circuits, that allow global citizens to act and react to issues
with the same speed as face-to-face communication. As discussed earlier, technological
breakthroughs mark the rise of a very new epoch in history. What is known as the Bronze
Age spanning 3000 to
3500 BCE the land period when cultures in Asia, Europe, and other parts of the world
making use of bronze, generated from mining copper and tin. By 1200 0 250 BCE, human
civilization saw the use of iron and steel to replace the metal tools of the Bronze Age. Thus
that period was known as the Iron Age.

The Industrial Age covered that broad period marked by the replacement of hand tools by
machines. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century, the creation of the
prototype of the steam engine in 1698 and the first useful steam engine in 1712 as
developed by Thomas Newcomen, and the installation of steam-powered textile looms are
just some of the more important inventions that transformed largely rural, agricultural
societies to urban, industrialized cities. The changes it brought to people's lives were so
dramatic such that the Industrial Age is also called the Industrial Revolution.

Another set of developments happened sometime between the late 19th century to the early
20th century. Historians approximate the period as something between 1870 and 1914. The
invention of steel, emerging from the rise of the manufacturing industry, signaled another
phase which can be aptly called the Second Industrial Revolution. Foremost of these is the
development of the process to produce steel. It was also the time that the use of electricity
fundamentally changed the way people worked and lived. By 1870, the first commercial
electrical generators started to be used. In 1881, Great Britain operated its first public power
station. Graham Bell (1847-1922) invented the telephone and Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
perfected the design of a light bulb which can be used not only in industrial settings but also
in the homes.

Today, the Internet and all other ICT technologies are said to be behind the rise of the
information age. Unlike the printing press or the telephone, no single person can claim the
credit for the invention of the Internet. Its emergence was the result of advances in computer
technology, improved circumstances in the manufacturing of personal computers, and the
rise of networking technology.

If the Industrial Revolution was marked by the use of machines, the informatico age is best
described as the availability and accessibility of massive amounts of information because of
computer technology and the infinite possibilities afforded by computer networking.

The 1969 ARPANET provided the basis for linking together computers. By 1970 the world's
first personal computer came out, developed by John Blankenbaker. Only 40 machines were
built and sold for US$750. By 1973. The first cell phone was released to the market by
Motorola's Communications Systems Division. The first releases of the cell phone were
expensive and therefore had little appeal to the consumer market. However, its technology
would later on be the foundation from which today's popular gadgets such as laptop,
smartphones, and tablets would emerge.

information age. For one, these technological breakthroughs demonstrated that Products
that were developed for consumer use hastened the emergence of the technology can be
made available to individual consumers and not just to the government, business, or
industrial entities.

The widespread use of these products spurred further innovations. The OWERT keyboard of
the typewriter, once a mechanical device, became the keyboard of the computer, now
transformed into an electronic device for inputting data. The personal computer became one
of the most essential apparatus in offices. It also became a household fixture. Meanwhile,
the video cassette recorder partnered with the television brought the cinema into our living
rooms.

In the 1990s, the Internet advanced and expanded its reach, giving rise to what was
predicted before as a knowledge society one that is marked by the dominance of industries
that generate knowledge and the preference for workers who can enable such process.
Examples of these industries include science and technology-oriented firms such as
pharmaceuticals, biotech, telecommunications, and medical equipment manufacturing:
hardware and software computer manufacturing; and aviation remain to be the most
demanding in the use of cutting-edge technology,

Meanwhile, the US was at the forefront of introducing innovations in television broadcasting.

The 1984 deregulation of the television industry and the relaxing of restriction on cable
television allowed investors such as the famous television magnate Ted Turner to expand
their investments to introduce widely a new product cable television, which was enabled by
powerful antennae that allowed the television to pick up signals from other channels in the
neighboring towns and places, thus offering the possibility of a dozen or even hundreds
more channels to choose from.

Corollary to the concept of the information age is the idea of an information society, one
which is characterized by the creation, use, transmission, and processing is the driving force
of human activity. The industrial age relied on steam power and fossil fuels to propel industry
and the economy; the information society relied on digital technologies operating computers
that are used across all industries. The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (2014) states that it
was the Austrian-American economist Fritz Machlup's 1962 publication "The Production and
Distribution of Knowledge in the United States." Machlup divides into five principal
categories: education, research and development, mass media, information machines, and
infor-mation services (e.g., finance and insurance).

Manuel Castells (1942-) holds the distinction of being the foremost theoretician of the
information age and the information society. His trilogy of books, titled The Information Age:
Economy, Society, and Culture, was published between 1996 and 1999 and contained his
groundbreaking research on the profound transformation of societies because of information
and communications technology. As he studied the expansion and dominance of information
and communications technology across nations, Castells found out that the challenges of a
more expansive world order, fueled by the profit-oriented nature of capitalism, compelled the
rise of the information age.

For Castells, the rise of ICT was the platform that pushed the parallel crises of environments
of the 1960s enabled the rise of social movements. But that was only communism and
capitalism in the 80s, in the same way that the information-rich the beginning of more
profound changes that will happen.

In a monograph released in 2013, Castells summarized his theoretical positions on the

information age. First, he singled out the technological development that was information
resources. Riunning under the principle of open source, Castell argues, is the Internet and
how it opened up to the global community an infinite amount of the singular most democratic
principle that propelled the information age. Second, he cited the democratic management of
the Internet, whose asset mainly lies in the democratic management of this open source
technology, allowing space for both commercial and nonprofit goals. Lastly and most
importantly, he said that the individualized act of using the Internet has led to its infinite
networking possibility.

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 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 overstimula tion, the 'mind' and its
decision processes behave erratically when overloaded."

The current social order high speed Internet, active content creation from the state and the
private sector has resulted in vast amounts of information that is deemed relevant to all
aspects of life. The situation of having vast amounts of information readily accessible has
been described by scholars as information explosion.

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.
Thus, the challenges confronting people to keep abreast of the exponentially expanding
amounts of information can be quite overwhelming. For instance, some information may
seem incomplete or inaccurate; worse, some are simply false or unverified. Because the
Internet is expansive and its resources almost infinite, it difficult to sort out and process
information.

While there are certainly challenges arising from ICT's massive influence of all aspects of
human life, these do not diminish how it enhances everyday living and how it provides
solutions to some of the most resilient problems we fact today, such as poverty, bad
governance, climate change, and other man-made and environmental disasters.