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• Information Age

  • Also known as Computer Age, Digital Age, or Age of New Media
  • Historical period beginning in mid-20th century, whose defining characteristic is a rapid shift from traditional industries to an economy driven by the need for information access and control
• Information Age


  • Period of rapid growth of information, which can easily be accessed through both traditional media (newspaper, TV, and radio) and the manipulation of information through the computer and computer networks
• John Waters


  • President and Creative Director of Waters Design Associates, Inc.
  • Describes the Information Age as a time when information got ahead of humankind and grew at a speed that we were unprepared to handle
• Transistors in 1947


  • The beginning of the Information Age was set up through this invention
  • Invented by American physicists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain
• Optical Amplifier in 1957


  • Invented by American physicist Gordon Gould
  • Both transistors and optical amplifiers were necessary for the development of computing and computers and fiber-optic communications, setting the stage for the explosion of information through their efficient methods of transmitting information
• Johannes Gutenberg


  • German goldsmith, invented the printing press around 1440
  • The beginnings of mass communication can be traced back to the invention of the printing press. The development of a fast and easy way of disseminating information in print permanently reformed the structure of society
• Printing Press


  A device that applies pressure to an inked surface lying on a print medium, such as cloth or paper, to transfer ink
• Computers


  Calculations became involved in communication due to the rapid development in the sector. Back then, people who compiled actuarial tables and did engineering calculations served as "computers"
• Harvard Mark 1


  A general purpose electromechanical computer that was 50 feet long and capable of doing calculations in seconds that usually took people hours
• Enigma Code


  An enciphering machine that the German armed forces used to securely send messages
• Alan Turing


  • An English mathematician, was hired in 1936 by the British top-secret Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park to break the Enigma code
  • His code-breaking methods became an industrial process having 12,000 people working 24/7
  • To counteract this, the Nazis made the Enigma more complicated having more or less 10 possible permutations of every encrypted message
• Bombe


  • Invention of Turing, an electromechanical machine that enabled the British to decipher encrypted messages of the German Enigma machine
  • This contribution of Turing along with other cryptologists shortened the war by two years
• Turing machine


  • In his paper On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungs problem, first published in 1937, Turing presented a theoretical machine called the Turing machine
  • Can solve any problem from simple instructions encoded on a paper tape
  • He also demonstrated the simulation of the Turing machine to construct a science and the invention of a machine later called a computer, that can solve any problem by performing any task from a written program
• Generation with "electronic brains"


  • In the 1970's, the generation who witnessed the dawn of the computer age
  • The people of this generation were the first to be introduced to personal computers (PCs)
• Homebrews Computer Club


  An early computer hobbyist group, gathered regularly to trade parts of computer hardware and talked about how to make computers more accessible to everyone
• Steve Wozniak


  • Co-founder of Apple Inc. in 1976, was developed the computer that made him famous: the Apple I
  • Wozniak designed the operating system, hardware, and circuit board of the computer all by himself
• Steve Jobs


  • Wozniak's friend, suggested to sell the Apple I as a fully assembled printed circuit board
  • This jumpstarted their career as founders of Apple Inc.
• Biodiversity


  The variety of life present in an ecosystem. Biodiversity is important in how society benefits from it.
• Genetic diversity


  The variations among organisms of the same species. These variations are usually passed down from parents to offspring.
• Species diversity


  The variety of species within a particular region.
• Species


  The basic units of biological classification. Species are grouped together in families based on shared characteristics.
• Ecological diversity


  The network of different species in an ecosystem and the interaction of these species.
• Heat energy from fire (Stone Age)


  Used mainly for survival against harsh cold environments, for cooking, and for communication with nearby tribes in the form of smoke
• Coal (1000 BC)


  Used as a source of energy by people in Northeastern China for heating and cooking, eventually became popular in other civilizations such as the Romans and Northern Naïve Americans
• Water energy or hydro power (400 BC)


  Used by the Ancient Greeks and Romans for irrigation
• Oil wells (347 AD)


  Developed in China, made use of extensive bamboo pipelines with depths of 800 feet for lighting and heating
• Wind energy (500 to 900 AD)


  The Persians started to use wind-powered grain mills and water pumps
• Wind energy (1300)


  Windmills, taking the modern pinwheel shape, were developed in Western Europe
• Wind energy (1390)


  The Dutch built larger windmills for draining lakes and marshes in the Rhine River Delta
• Wind energy


  Used to navigate through bodies of water
• Biomass (1700s to 1800s)


  At the time of the Industrial Revolution, source of energy was replaced with coal and the British discovered that by burning, coal is transformed into hot-burning coke, a fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, leading to widespread use of coal all over the world
• Natural gas (1820s)


  Used as a source of light although the lack of pipeline infrastructure made its distribution challenging
• Electric generator (1830s)


  Developed based on Michael Faraday's discovery of electromagnetism
• Commercial oil (1850s)


  Drilled which led to the distillation of kerosene from petroleum
• Solar powered system (1860s)


  Augustine Mouchot developed the first solar powered system for industrial machinery
• Geothermal energy


  First used in 1892
• Nuclear fission reactor


  First designed and built in 1942
• Coal energy (19th-20th century)


  The utilization of coal energy shaped the industrialization of the United States, United Kingdom, and the other European countries
• Floodways


  Used to cope with the adverse effects of the changing tides, to prevent flooding in nearby communities that usually result in damaged crops
• Aqueducts


  Invented and built by the Romans and the Greeks, to maintain stable water and irrigation of crops, dams were built to maintain water supply in communities