Chapter 7 

The Information Age

This period which is also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age
began around the 1970s and is still going on today. This era brought about a time period in
which people could access information and knowledge easily.

Pre-Gutenberg Period
 During the Middle Ages in Europe, most people lived in small, isolated villages hence the
only source of both religious and worldly information was the village Catholic priest in the
pulpit and news passed from one person to another, often in the form of rumor. 
 Written documents were rare and often doubted by the common people as forgeries.
What counted in important matters was oral testimony based on oaths taken in the name
of God to tell the truth
 Almost no one could read or write the language they spoke. 
 Books, all hand-copied, were rare, expensive, and almost always in Latin. 

Memory and memorization 

 ruled daily life and learning 
 Poets, actors and story tellers relied on rhyming lines to remember vast amounts of
material. 
 Craftsmen memorized the secrets of their trades to pass on orally to apprentices. 
 Mechanics kept their accounts in their heads. 
 Scholars literate in Latin used memory devices to remember what they had learned. 

Scribes
 often monks living in monasteries, each labored for up to a year to copy a single book,
usually in Latin. 
 The scribes copied books on processed calfskin called velum and later on paper.
Specialists or the scribes themselves “illuminated’ (painted) large capital letters and the
margins of many books with colorful designs were very costly.

Gutenberg Revolution

Johannes Gutenberg 
 turned the printing world upside down
 brought on a new era of print with his revolutionary innovation of movable type in 1445.

Before Gutenberg Revolution Gutenberg Revolution

 All texts had been printed with  Movable type printing

woodblocks
 Fixed text stamps
Movable type printing 

 Used metal stamps of single letters - could be arranged into words, sentences and
pages of text. 
 Using a large manually operated - the stamps would be arranged to read a page of
text so that when covered with ink, it would print out a page of text. 

 By 1463, printed Bibles cost one-tenth of hand-copied Bibles. 

 By 1500, Europe had more than 1,000 printers and 7,000 books in print

Books planted the seeds of democracy and human rights in the next generation of thinkers.
Newspapers and pamphlets generated information and ideas even faster.

Impact of the printing press 

 It allowed for the much more rapid spread of accurate information but, more elusive.
 It produced enormous impact on the nations and population in Europe at large. 

The printing Renaissance opened the realm of learning and reading to the local populations
as schools were built and books about education were written and print published. 

Era of Mass Communication 

 the arrival of mechanical movable type printing which permanently altered the structure
of society; 

 the relatively unrestricted circulation of information and revolutionary ideas

transcended borders
 captured the masses in the Reformation
 threatened the power of political and religious authorities

The sharp increase in literacy;

 Broke the monopoly of the literate elite on education and learning 
 Bolstered the emerging middle class. 

Across Europe
  The increasing cultural self-awareness of its people led to the rise of proto-nationalism,
accelerated by the flowering of the European vernacular languages to the detriment of
Latin’s status as lingua franca.

Benefits of printing press to the;

 
Scientists - easily communicate their discoveries through widely disseminated scholarly
journals, helping to bring on the scientific revolution. 
Writer - authorship became more meaningful and profitable.

Printed Materials as Agents of Change Gutenberg’s

For the printed materials to be more accessible, it allowed for the spread of knowledge both
within elite communities, like the Catholic Church and the scientific community, and also to the
rest of the general population. 
  It brought about new innovations and ideas that lead to changes in power and standards
in both religious and scientific areas of European culture. These included 
 Shift in religious power from the church authority to the general population
 Standardization of scientific reporting, 
 Influx of new scientific discoveries. 

Even more, 
 It allowed for greater accessibility and spread of all kinds of knowledge throughout a
wider population never before seen, bringing about several new social dynamics that will
lead to several social revolutions.

Post-Gutenberg Period 

The impact of the Gutenberg printing press 

 It was immeasurable. 
 It caused nothing less than a dramatic social and cultural revolution. 
 The sudden widespread dissemination of printed works gave direct rise to the European
Renaissance. 
 Gutenberg’s invention of the movable type press meant that Protestant tracts and the
arguments between Martin Luther and the Catholic Church which led to the Reformation
could be widely disseminated. 

The Reformation 
 It began in Germany in the early 16th century, leading to the Bible being printed in the
languages common to people. 
 Gutenberg’s invention led inevitably to the Protestant revolution, the Age of
Enlightenment, the development of Modern Science and Universal Education. In other
words, everything that has led to human progress and the advancement of the modern
world.

At present
 People are beginning to look for secure and accurate and believable news portals but,
the traditional trusted publishing outlets have less public beliefs as many people believe
governments are manipulating them. 
 The local press are in sharp circulation decline, and the online advertising businesses
have moved to Google and Facebook and others. 
 Many people now prefer to believe people from their social environment, instead of
turning to “the media”. The collateral damage caused by the digitization is increasing
amounts of information and currently this is not going to stop.

The Emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web

 It happened in the 1990s and was initially hailed by many as ushering in a new
democratic age, driven by much greater access to information. 
 The revolutionary shifts predicted did not occur because in its earliest days, the World
Wide Web still conformed to the Gutenberg principle. 
 The reality of much greater access to information was not matched by a greater ability to
publish it.
Paradoxes of Technology

Empowerment Enslavement
New technologies allow us to be connected toHowever, as a result, our privacy is threatened
and reachable by everyone. and technology starts controlling us. Whether
we want or not, we feel socially obliged to take
phone calls, answer emails, and send
responses to messages on Facebook.
Independent Dependence
New gadgets such as cell phones allow us to However, this situation creates dependency,
do many things on our own. as we can’t go even one day without our
phones and we feel helpless when the Internet
is down
Fulfills needs Creates
Technology resolves some problems But also introduces new ones, needs e.g. we
need devices with longer battery life, we need
antivirus software to be safe, we need to learn
new skills, etc.
Competence Incompetence
We can get any information we want and However, we lose our ability to remember
reach anyone we want with the help of new phone numbers and our ability to articulate
technologies. thoughts
Engaging Disengaging
When we are engaged in an activity that We directly interact with our family and loved
involves the use of new technology, we need ones less frequently because we tend to
to disengage from whatever we are doing. engage more in new portable technology tools.

Public
New technologies blur the line between what
is public and what is private.
Illusion
We tend to think new communication
technologies make our lives better.
Private
People may talk on the phone or message
someone among a
circle of acquaintances, which may be
disturbing
Disillusion
However, the more we communicate, the more
trivial our conversations become. In other
words, more communication does not always
equal better communication.

Speed of access also limited the ability of the internet to be a channel for all forms of media,
restricting its use to text based and transactional forms. As a result, much of the initial
investment in the web went into servicing and creating institutional opportunities, with e-
commerce emerging as the major new web-based phenomena. 

This changed with two developments:

1. The spread of broadband internet access made it possible to easily both upload and
download all forms of media.
 video 
 images
 audio
 text and transactions
 2. Tools emerged which made it simple for people to publish or spread information. 
 Blogging 
 YouTube
 Flickr

Third trend: Gathering Significance

 It is based around attaching relevance and content to all of the otherwise random pieces
of information now being published. 
 This concerns practices such as:
 tagging
 rating and commenting
 social bookmarking 
 news-sharing sites 

 It is responsible for creating forms of collective intelligence and what has been called
‘crowd wisdom’
 The most important area to watch going forwards because of its ability to allow
individuals to create the trust and connections necessary to transact and communicate
amongst themselves without any institutionalized intervention.