Information Age and Knowledge

Information Age

• The Information Age is a period starting in the last quarter of the 20th century, characterized by effortless accessibility of information through publications and computer management.
• The primary factors driving this new age forward are convenience and user-friendliness.

Pre-Gutenberg Era

• Books were written and produced by hand.
• They were made on surfaces of clay, wax, papyrus, and parchment.
• Books and other reading materials were restricted to an elite group of people.
• Word-of-mouth channels were used to relay information to others.

Gutenberg Revolution

• Began with the introduction of movable type printing.
• Gutenberg principle enabled information to be passed on to every individual, but access was expensive.
• Books printed using presses in the beginning of the Gutenberg era were called "incunabula" or "cradle of birthplace".
• Gutenberg printing technology spread in Italy, Paris, and London.
• Most books were written in Latin, but as time passed, books were written in local languages.

Post-Gutenberg World

• This era can be described as the emergence of the internet and the worldwide web.
• Way to possible uploading and downloading of all forms of media instruments, making access to information easier.

The Rise of Digital Age

• In the beginning of modern technologies, printing presses are not the only tools used in spreading information.
• Computers, cellphones, printers, digital cameras, etc. are now readily available to pass and receive information from one individual to another.

Key Technologies and Innovations

• Computer: an electronic device that stores and processes data, invented by Charles Babbage.
• Internet: created by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn in California, USA in the late 1960s, a global system of interconnected computer networks and devices.
• World Wide Web (WWW): discovered by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, started in the 1990s for commercial purposes.
• Electronic Mail (E-mail): discovered by V.A. Shiva Ayyudurai, started building the system in 1978 when he was 14 years old.
• Facebook: founded by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow students in Harvard College, launched in February 2004, a social networking website.
• Messenger: an application that lets you send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio, and files.
• YouTube: founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, a video-sharing platform.
• Google: developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as a research project in 1996, indexes billions of web pages to allow users to search for information.
• Instagram: created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in October 2010, a photo and video social media application.
• Twitter: created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan William in March 2006, a social networking website for news, entertainment, sports, politics, and more.

Information Anxiety

• Human cause of information overload
• Produced by the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand
• The black hole between data and knowledge, and what happens when information

Truths of The Information Age

• Information must compete
• Newer is equated with truer
• Selection is a viewpoint
• The media sells what the culture buys
• The early word gets the perm
• You are what you eat and so is your brain
• Anything in great demand will be counterfeited
• Ideas are seen as controversial
• Undead information walks ever on
• Media presence creates the story
• The medium selects the message
• The whole truth is a pursuit