CSTS Science, Technology and Society

Chapter 10

The Information Age

A. Desired Learning Outcomes

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.

B. Introduction

The Information Age

Highly modernized, automated, data-driven, and technologically advanced—this best
describes our society nowadays, as evidenced by how information could be transferred or shared
quickly. Different areas of the society such as communication, economics, various industries,
health, and environment have been influenced by this abrupt change. Though despite what we gain
due to this development, the rapid upgrade of information also faces its disadvantages.

Accompanied by endless transmission of information that takes place within and outside
the human body, according to Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, information is
"knowledge communicated or obtained concerning a fact or circumstance. " Hence, information is
a very important tool for survival.

The Information Age is defined as a "period starting in the last quarter of the 20th century
when information became effortlessly accessible through publications and through the
management of information by computers and computer networks" ([Link], n.d.). The

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means of conveying symbolic information (e.g., writing, math, other codes) among humans has
evolved with increasing speed. The Information Age is also called the Digital Age and the New
Media Age because it was associated with the development of computers.

James R. Messenger who proposed the Theory of Information Age in 1982, said that "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."

C. Input

Computer
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. 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.

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1. Personal
Computer (PC)

It is a single-user instrument.
2. Desktop PCs were first known as
Computer microcomputers since they were 3. Laptops
a complete computer but built
on a smaller scale than the
enormous systems operated by These are portable
It is described as a PC that is most businesses. computers that integrate
not designed for portability. the essentials of a
The assumption with a desktop desktop computer in a
is that it will be set up in a battery-powered
permanent spot. A workstation package, which are
is simply a desktop computer somewhat larger than a
that has a more powerful Types of typical hardcover book.
processor, additional memory, Computers They are commonly
and enhanced capabilities for called notebooks.
performing special group of
tasks ([Link], 2017).

7. Wearable
4. Personal Computers
Digital Assistants
(PDAs) 6. Mainframes

They involve
5. Server
materials that are
These are tightly
usually integrated
integrated computers that
These are huge computer into cell phones,
usually have no
It refers to a computer systems that can fill an watches and other
keyboards but rely on a
that has been improved to entire room. They are small objects or
touch screen for user
provide network services used especially by large places. They perform
input. PDAs are typically
to other computers. firms to describe the common computer
smaller than a paperback,
Servers usually boast large, expensive machines applications such as
lightweight, and battery
powerful processors, tons that process millions of databases, email,
powered ([Link],
of memory, and large transactions every day. multimedia, and
2017).
hard drives ([Link], 2017). schedulers
([Link], 2017). ([Link], 2017)

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The World Wide Web (Internet)

The origin of the Internet was traced by historians to 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 proposal that information can be quantitatively encoded
as a sequence of ones and zeroes.

The Internet is a worldwide system of interconnected network" that facilitate data

transmission among innumerable computers. It was developed during the 1970s by the Department
of Defense. In case of an attack, military advisers suggested the advantage of being able to operate
on one computer from another terminal. In the early days, the Internet was used mainly by
scientists to communicate with other scientists. The Internet remained under government control
until 1984 (Rouse, 2014).

Speed was one of the early problems encountered relevant to the use of internet; phone
lines can only transmit at a limited rate. It was later that the development of fiber-optic cables had
allowed billions of bits of information making it possible to be received at a minute phase.
Companies like Intel developed faster microprocessors so personal computers could process the
incoming signals at a more rapid rate ([Link], 2017).

 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. After talking with family, friends, and
other investors into contributing $1 million, the researchers launched their company in
1998. Google is now the world's most popular search engine, accepting more than 200
million queries daily.

Back then, new forms of communication were also introduced. Electronic mail, or email,
was a suitable way to send a message to fellow workers, business partners, or friends. Messages
could be sent and received at the convenience of the individual. A letter that took several days to
arrive could be read in minutes. Internet providers like America Online and CompuServe set up
electronic chat rooms. These were open areas of cyberspace where interested parties could join in

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a conversation with perfect strangers• "Surfing the net" became a pastime in and of itself
(UShistowarg, 2017).

Consequently, companies whose businesses are built on digitized information have become
valuable and powerful in a relatively short period of time; the current Information Age has
spawned its own breed of wealthy influential brokers, from Microsoft's Bill Gates to Applets Steve
Jobs to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

With the sprout of technological advances, critics charged that the Internet created a
technological divide that increased the gap between the members of the higher class and lower
class of society. Those who could not afford a computer, or a monthly access fee were denied these
possibilities. Many decried the impersonal nature of electronic communication compared to a
telephone call or a handwritten letter.

On one hand, 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 meeting
violent predators would prove to be difficult. Nowadays, crimes in various forms are rampant
because of the use of social media. Cyber bullying is an issue that poses alarm worldwide.
Consequently, we need to be aware of the possible harm and damage due to abuse of these
advances in the Information Age.

Applications of Computers in Science and Research

One of the significant applications of computers for science and research is evident in the
field of bioinformatics. Bioinformatics is 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.).

Early interest in bioinformatics was established because of a need to create databases of

biological sequences. The human brain cannot store all the genetic sequences of organisms and
this huge amount of data can only be stored, analyzed, and be used efficiently with the use of
computers.

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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
initiated in [Link] now has about 70,000 protein sequences more than 5000 model organisms, a
small fraction of all known organisms. The enormous variety of divergent data resources is now
available for study and research by both academic institutions and industries. This ace made
available as public domain information in the larger interest of research community through the
Internet ([Link]) and CD-ROMs (on request from [Link]). These
databases are constantly updated with additional entries (Madan, n.d.).

Computers and software tools are widely used for generating these databases and to
identify the function 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 (used for comparing sequences); Annotator (an interactive
genome analysis tool); and GeneFinder (tool to identify coding regions and splice sites)
(Madan,n.d.).

The sequence information generated by the human genome research, initiated in 1988, and
has now been stored as a primary information source for future applications 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 and reading alone (ignoring understanding factor) would require 26 years working
around the clock. For a population of about five billion human beings with two individuals
differing in three million bases, the genomic sequence difference database would have about
15,000,000 billion entries. 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. The much-celebrated complete human genome sequence which was formally
announced on the 26th of June 2000 involved more than 500 x 1018 (500 million trillion)
calculations during the process of assembling the sequences alone. This can be considered as the
biggest exercise in the history of computational biology (Madan, n.d.).

Now, from the pharmaceutical industry’s point of view, bioinformatics is the key to rational
drug discovery. It reduces number of trials in the screening of drug compounds and in identifying

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potential drug targets for a disease using high-power computing workstations and software like
Insight. This profound application bioinformatics in genome sequence has led to a new area in
pharmacology- pharmacogenomics, where potential targets for drug development are
hypothesized from the genome sequences. Molecular modelling, which requires a lot of
calculations, has become faster due to the advances in computer processors and its architecture
(Madan, n.d.). In plant biotechnology, bioinformatics is found to be useful in the areas of
identifying diseases resistance genes and designing plants with high nutrition value (Madan, n.d.).

How to Check the Reliability of Web Sources

The Internet offers a vast collection of highly valuable information, that 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. (Lee College Library, n.d.)

1. Who is the author

of the article/site?

Look for an "About"

 Does the author provide his or her credentials?
or "More About the
 What type of expertise does he or she have on the subject he or
Author" link at the
she is writing about? Does he or she indicate what his or her
top, bottom, or
education is?
sidebar of the
 What type of experience does he or she have? Should you trust
webpage. Some
his or her knowledge of the subject?
pages will have a
corporate author
rather than a single
person as an author.
If no information
 What kinds of websites are associated with the author's name?
about the author(s)
Is he or she affiliated with any educational institution?
of the page is

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provided, be  Do commercial sites come up? Do the websites associated with

suspicious. the author give you any clues to biases the author might have?

Try searching on the

Internet for
information about the
author.

2. Who published the

 Look at the domain name of the website that will tell you who
site?
is hosting the site. For instance, the Lee College Library
website is: [Link] library. The domain name is
"[Link]." This tells you that the library website is hosted by
Lee College.
 Search the domain name at [Link] The site
provides information about the owners of registered domain
names. What is the main purpose? Check the organization's
main website, if it has one. Is it educational? Commercial? Is it
a reputable organization?
 Do not ignore the 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

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3. What is the main

 To sell a product?
purpose of the site?
Why did the author  As a personal hobby?
write it and why did
 As public service?
the publisher post it?
 To further scholarship on a topic?
 To provide general information on a topic?
 To persuade you of a particular point of view?

4. Who is the
 Scholars or the general public?
intended audience?
 Which age group is it written for?
 Is it aimed at people from a geographic area?
 Is it aimed at members of a profession or with specific training?

5. What is the quality  Timeliness: When was the website first published? Is it regularly
of information
updated? Check for dates at the bottom of each page on the site.
provided on the
website?  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

1. AFA e-Newsletter (Alzheimer's Foundation of America newsletter)
2. American Memory — the Library of Congress historical digital collection.
3. [Link] 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.

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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 MedlinePlus
 [Link]
 PDRhealth
7. Global Gateway: World Culture & Resources (from the Library of Congress)
8. Google Books
9. [Link]
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 Modem 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. Nation Master — 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 ([Link])

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 National Guidelines Clearinghouse ([Link])

 PubMed ([Link])
21. Project Gutenberg - the first and largest single collection of free electronic books with
currently over 20000 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.

One can also visit the university library and seek help from librarians as they are
knowledgeable, and the library has a rich collection of online library resources that are very useful
for academic and research purposes.

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D. Reference(s)

• Janice Patria Javier, et al (2018), Science, Technology and Society. Rex Book Store.

Prepared by:

ENGR. MAY B. CHAN

Assistant Professor I
Process

Disclaimer and Copyright

The author is providing this module and its contents on an “as is” basis and make no representations or warranties of
any kind with respect to its contents. The content of this module is for informational purposes only and is not intended
to alter, replace, or restitute any materials such as books and resources that are reliable and serve as source reference of
this module. The use of this book implies your acceptance of this disclaimer. All rights reserved to the author and
publisher of Science, Technology and Society.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.

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