Topic 9b: The Information Age

Learning Objectives
At the end of this topic, students will be able to:
 Discuss the history of Information Age
 Determine the human and social impacts of developments in the Information
Age

INSTRUCTIONS: Answer the Activity 1 and Activity 2 below

ACTIVITY 1
1. Situation:

Imagine that you are lost in the wilderness. There is a substitution cypher (a
method of encrypting a message in which a different alphabet systematically
replaces the original text's letters) that you need to answer to solve your
dilemma.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M NO P Q R S T U V WX Y Z
S T U V W X Y Z A B C D E F G H I J K L MN O P Q R

Hint: This is the first thing that you will be doing when you are at lost

Encrypted word: AFXGJESLAGF KWSJUZAFY

Answer:

Information plays an essential role in understanding truth and reality. If there is

information available, our lives might be enigmatic and chaotic. The development of

our system of acquiring, storing, and retrieving information had spurt with the advent

of science and technology. Now we are in the century which is considered by many

as the Information Age.

Information Age started in the last quarter of the 20 century when information
th

became effortlessly accessible through publication and data management by

computers and computer networks. It is a genuinely new age based upon the

interconnection of computers via telecommunications, with these systems operating

on both real-time and as-needed basis- Theory of Information Age (Messenger,

1982).

Before it has reached its current state, constant change has taken place in the

information revolution. From the 1960s to 1970s, the rapid growth of information

resulted in difficulty collecting and managing them1980s. There was Information

Anxiety (Richard Wurman). In the 1990s, information became the currency of the

business world. At present, information turned out to be a commodity, an

overdeveloped product, mass-produced, and unspecialized.

Robert Harris has outlined the truths about Information Age. He described it as

follows

1. Information must complete

2. Newer is equated to truer

3. Selection is a viewpoint

4. The media sells what the culture buys

5. The early word gets the perm

6. You are what you eat, and so is your brain

7. Anything in great demand will be counterfeited

8. Ideas are seen as controversial

9. Undead information walks ever on

10. Media presence creates the story

11. The medium selects the message

 12. The whole truth is a pursuit

Accessibility of information was made faster and easier with the aid of a

computer. One of the significant applications of computers for science and

research is evident in the field of bioinformatics. Bioinformatics is the

application of information technology to store, organize and analyze a vast

amount of biological data available in sequences and structures of proteins –

the building blocks of organisms and nucleic acids- the information carrier

(Madan, n.d.) Such was established because of the need to create

databases of biological sequences. The application includes the Human

Genome Project, Pharmacogenomics Drug Discovery, Gene Finder, and

Annotator.

Activity 2
1.Problems with fake news have surfaced on different multimedia
platforms. With these, users must be knowledgeable on how to verify a
source's authenticity. Create a checklist for checking on the reliability and
authenticity of information found in websites and journals.
2.Create a poster on the advantages and disadvantages of Technology.