Specific Issues in STS(The Information Age)

The Internet is essentially a vast network of computers. Importantly, it is a de-

centralized network; it does not depend on a central mainframe computer as networks did in
the 1950s and 1960s. The idea for a vast, decentralized computer network originated with the
Cold War and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
ARPA scientists and engineers wanted to create a computer network in which any computer
could exchange information with any other computer. The destruction of one or more parts of
the network—perhaps from a Soviet attack—would not disrupt communication between
other computers in the system.
Computers were first linked to form ARPANET, as this early network was called, in 1969.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as computers became more common, academic researchers
and engineers began linking their computers to ARPANET. As the network grew—branching
haphazardly and quite beyond the control of its original creators—it came to be known as the
“Internet.”
Many people associate the Internet with e-mail. E-mail is only one of the many ways that
information can be shared over the Internet, but e-mail was one of the most popular uses for
the Internet in its early years. Researchers welcomed e-mail as a fast, easy, and free way to
communicate with colleagues. Researchers also experimented with different ways of
transporting files across the Internet.
In order to share computer files across the Internet, the computers on the net- work need to
share a common protocol, or standard, for how the data will be transported electronically.
The most famous such protocol—and the one that propelled the Internet to nationwide
popularity—is Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. HTML was invented by Tim Berners-Lee,
a British computer programmer who developed the protocol as a convenient way of sharing
documents over the Internet. In 1991 HTML became the basis for the World Wide Web, a
subset of the Internet in which HTML documents are grouped to form websites that are linked
to one another.
The World Wide Web made the Internet more easily accessible and for many people, fun to
use. Instead of just text, Internet users could now access still pictures, animation, and sound.
As a result, the Internet experienced an enormous surge in popularity throughout the 1990s.
Whereas in 1993 there were less than 90,000 people using the Internet on a regular basis, in
1999 there were approximately 171 million, and in 2000 there were over 300 million.
Estimates in 2001 indicate that 58 percent of the U.S. population, or 165.18 million people,
have access to the Internet at home. Government and independent market research indicates
that the number of Internet users could reach 1 billion by 2005.
The phenomenal growth of the Internet is a major component of the information revolution,
but it is not the only part. The Internet has spurred a wave of in- novation in communications
technology. Not just computers, but also cell phones, personal digital assistants, and even
automobiles can now link to the Internet. And software companies have developed countless
applications to harness the Internet’s potential.
Many of these applications are business-oriented. The instantaneous access to information
that the Internet offers has revolutionized the way many companies do business. It has also
 given rise to a new type of business: e-commerce. E-retailers like Amazon.com essentially
offer customers a convenient, interactive, customizable, and constantly updated mail-order
catalog, while others, such as the auction site eBay, offer services that would not be possible
without the World Wide Web. E-commerce generated almost $47.6 billion in revenue in 2001.
Investors will continue to monitor the Internet’s effect on the economy, but the social aspects
of the Information Revolution—its effects on everything from entertainment to education to
government—are harder to quantify. Many commentators question just how sweeping the
changes wrought by information technology have been. Others wonder whether those
changes are on par with the societal transformations brought on by past technologies such as
the printing press and the steam engine. Robert J. Samuelson believes it may be too soon to
judge the impact of new information technologies: “Technologies acquire historical weight by
reshaping the human condition,” he writes. “As yet the Internet isn’t in the same league with
[past] developments.” Frances Cairncross, the author of The Death of Distance: How the
Communications Revolution Is Changing Our Lives, makes a bolder prediction:
Think of [the information revolution] as one of the three great revolutions in the cost of
transport. The nineteenth century, dominated by the steamship and the railway, saw a
transformation in the cost of transporting goods; the twentieth century, with first the motor
car and then the airplane, in the cost of transporting people. The new century will be
dominated by the transformation in the cost of transporting knowledge and ideas.

Let us Read :

A. History

The timeline below traces the history of the Information Age and Systems:

 Four basic periods

Characterized by a principal technology used to solve the input, processing, output and
communication problems of the time:
A. Pre-mechanical,
B. Mechanical,
C. Electromechanical, and
D. Electronic

A. The Pre-mechanical Age: 3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D.

1. Writing and Alphabets--communication.

A. First humans communicated only through speaking and simple drawings known
as petroglyths (signs or simple figures carved in rock).

Many of these are pictographs -- pictures or sketches that visually resemble that which is
depicted.
 E.g., cave painting from Lascaux, France, c. 15,000-10,000 BC

E.g., prehistoric petroglythic imagery from Western U.S.:Geometric signs (dots,

squares, etc.) with no apparent depicted object = ideographs( symbols to represent
ideas or concepts.)

B. First development of signs corresponding to spoken sounds, instead of pictures, to express words.

o Starting in c. 3100 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (southern Iraq)

devised cuneiform -- the first true written language and the first real information
system.
 Pronounced "coo-nay-eh-form"
  Cuneiform's evolution:
Early pictographic tablet (3100 B.C.).

Pictographs were turned on their sides (2800 B.C.) and then developed into
actual cuneiform symbols (2500 B.C.) -- as this clay tablet illustrates.

Pictographs for star (which also

meant heaven or god), head, and water (on the left) were turned on their side (in the middle),
and eventually became cuneiform symbols (on right).
cuneiform table (c. 2100 B.C.) listing expenditures of grain and animals.

 From this first civilization as we know it today.

C. Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols that expressed single syllables and
consonants (the first true alphabet).D. The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician alphabet and
added vowels; the Romans gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.
A. Egyptian system: 2. Paper and Pens--input technologies.

A. Sumerians' input technology was a stylus that could scratch marks in wet clay.
B. About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians wrote on the papyrus plant

C. Around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day
papermaking is based,

3. Books and Libraries--output technologies (permanent storage devices).

A. Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books"

B. The Egyptians kept scrolls.

C. Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and
bind them together.

4. The First Numbering Systems.

 The numbers 1-9 as vertical lines, the number 10 as a U or circle, the

number 100 as a coiled rope, and the number 1,000 as a lotus blossom.

B. The first numbering systems similar to those in use today were invented between 100
and 200 A.D. by Hindus in India who created a nine-digit numbering system.
C. Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.

5. The First Calculators: The Abacus.

B. The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840

1. The First Information Explosion.

A. Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany; c. 1387-1468)
 Invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450.
B. The development of book indexes and the widespread use of page numbers.
2. The first general purpose "computers"

o Actually people who held the job title "computer: one who works with numbers."
Slide Rules, the Pascaline and Leibniz's Machine.
o Slide Rule.

Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule
 Early example of an analog computer.
o Pascaline. Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62).
o The Pascaline (front)

(rear view)
Diagram of interior

 One of the first mechanical computing machines, around 1642.

o Leibniz's Machine.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), German mathematician and
 philosopher.

The Reckoner (reconstruction)

o
Babbage's Engines
Charles Babbage (1792-1871), eccentric English mathematician

o The Difference Engine.

 Working model created in 1822.

  The "method of differences".
o The Analytical Engine.

Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom.

 Designed during the 1830s
Parts remarkably similar to modern-day computers.
 The "store"
 The "mill"
 Punch cards.
 Punch card idea picked up by Babbage from Joseph Marie Jacquard's
(1752-1834) loom.
 Introduced in 1801.
 Binary logic
 Fixed program that would operate in real time.
o Augusta Ada Byron (1815-52).

o The first programmer

C. The Electromechanical Age: 1840 - 1940.

The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key advance made during this
period. Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical
impulses.

1. The Beginnings of Telecommunication.

A. Voltaic Battery.
 Late 18th century.
B. Telegraph.
 Early 1800s.
C. Morse Code.
  Developed in1835 by Samuel Morse
 Dots and dashes.
D. Telephone and Radio.


Alexander Graham Bell.
 1876
E. Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can
produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.
F. These two events led to the invention of the radio
 Guglielmo Marconi
 1894
2. Electromechanical Computing
A. Herman Hollerith and IBM.
Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) in 1880.

Census Machine.
Early punch cards.
 Punch card workers.

 By 1890
 The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
 Its first logo

Mark 1.
Paper tape stored data and program instructions.

 Howard Aiken, a Ph.D. student at Harvard University

 Built the Mark I
 Completed January 1942
 8 feet tall, 51 feet long, 2 feet thick, weighed 5 tons, used about
750,000 parts

D. The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present.

1. First Tries.
o Early 1940s
o Electronic vacuum tubes.
2. Eckert and Mauchly.

A. The First High-Speed, General-Purpose Computer Using Vacuum Tubes:

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
The ENIAC team (Feb 14, 1946). Left to right: J. Presper Eckert, Jr.; John Grist
Brainerd; Sam Feltman; Herman H. Goldstine; John W. Mauchly; Harold Pender;
Major General G. L. Barnes; Colonel Paul N. Gillon.

Rear view (note vacuum tubes).

 Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)

 1946.
 Used vacuum tubes (not mechanical devices) to do its
calculations.
1. Hence, first electronic computer.
  Developers John Mauchly, a physicist, and J. Prosper
Eckert, an electrical engineer
1. The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the
University of Pennsylvania
 Funded by the U.S. Army.
 But it could not store its programs (its set of instructions)
B. The First Stored-Program Computer(s)
 The Manchester University Mark I (prototype).

 Early 1940s, Mauchly and Eckert began to design the EDVAC - the
Electronic Discreet Variable Computer.
 John von Neumann's influential report in June 1945:
 "The Report on the EDVAC"
 British scientists used this report and outpaced the Americans.
 Max Newman headed up the effort at Manchester
University
1. Where the Manchester Mark I went into operation
in June 1948--becoming the first stored-program
computer.
 Maurice Wilkes, a British scientist at Cambridge University,
completed the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage
Automatic Calculator) in 1949--two years before EDVAC
was finished.
1. Thus, EDSAC became the first stored-program
computer in general use (i.e., not a prototype)
C. The First General-Purpose Computer for Commercial Use: Universal
Automatic Computer (UNIVAC).
 UNIVAC publicity photo.

 Late 1940s, Eckert and Mauchly began the development of a

computer called UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)
 Remington Rand.
 First UNIVAC delivered to Census Bureau in 1951.
 But, a machine called LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) went into
action a few months before UNIVAC and became the world's first
commercial computer.
3. The Four Generations of Digital Computing.
1. Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs)

2. Microprocessors that contained memory, logic, and control circuits (an

entire CPU = Central Processing Unit) on a single chip.

 Which allowed for home-use personal computers or PCs, like the

Apple (II and Mac) and IBM PC.
 Apple II released to public in 1977, by Stephen Wozniak and
Steven Jobs.
o Initially sold for $1,195 (without a monitor); had 16k
RAM.
 First Apple Mac released in 1984.
 IBM PC introduced in 1981.
o Debuts with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating
System)
 Fourth generation language software products
o E.g., Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, Microsoft Word, and
many others.
o Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for PCs arrive in early
1980s

 MS Windows debuts in 1983, but is quite a clunker.

 Windows wouldn't take off until version 3 was released in 1990

 o Apple's GUI (on the first Mac) debuts in 1984,

 with a one-time only Super Bowl ad.

B. Positive/negative Impacts of Social Media:

While many technology experts and scholars have concerns about the social,
political and economic fallout from the spread of digital activities, they also tend to
report that their own experience of digital life has been positive

Technology experts and scholars have never been at a loss for concerns about
the current and future impact of the internet.

Over the years of canvassing by Pew Research Center and Elon University’s
Imagining the Internet Center, many experts have been anxious about the way people’s
online activities can undermine truth, foment distrust, jeopardize individuals’ well-
being when it comes to physical and emotional health, enable trolls to weaken
democracy and community, compromise human agency as algorithms become
embedded in more activities, kill privacy, make institutions less secure, open up larger
 social divisions as digital divides widen, and wipe out untold numbers of decent-paying
jobs.

An early-2018 expert canvassing of technology experts, scholars and health

specialists on the future of digital life and well-being contained references to some of
those concerns. The experts who participated in that research project were also asked
to share anecdotes about their own personal experiences with digital life. This report
shares those observations

 The positives of digital life:

1. Family enrichment and enhancement

2. Work creator, enabler and enhancer
3. Health and wellness aid
4. Community lifeline
5. Social media: The horizon expander
6. Knowledge storehouse
7. Problem solver and wonder creator
8. Education tool
9. Travel companion and enhancer
10. Safety enabler

Individual output: Essay on:

 A day Without Technology( at least 500 words)

 Video Clip: TED Talk: Julian Assange on Why the world needs Wikileaks

References:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Nature's-longest-threads%3A-New-frontiers-in-
the-and-Balakrishnan-Sreekantan/62e4e86cbc6228313c4190e28ab349307d8ee23a

https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks/transcript

https://www.preceden.com/timelines/37313-how-did-we-came-to-the-information-age-