SPECIFIC ISSUES IN SCIENCE,

TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY Table 1. Timeline of the Information Age (United

States American History, n.d.)
Information- “knowledge communicated or
obtained concerning a specific fact or
circumstance” (Webster’s Encyclopedic
Unabridged Dictionary).
 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” (Vocabulary.com,
n.d.).
 It is also called the Digital Age and the
New Media Age because it was associated
with the development of computers.

James R. Messenger- proposed the Theory of

Information Age in 1982. According to him, “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.”
“Information Anxiety”- the difficulty in
collecting and managing information starting in
the 1960’s because of its abundance (Richard
Wurman).
In the present generation, there is no doubt that
information has turned out to be a/an:

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 (UShistory.org, 2017).