UNIVERSITY OF SAN AGUSTIN
college of liberal arts sciences and education
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY (STS) - TOPIC 8
Information Society
PREPARED BY: IVANNE PEARL GUILLERMO
• Discuss the development of the information age and its impact on society.
• Illustrate how social media have affected their lives.
• Uphold values of academic freedom, integrity, and accountability.
objectives | əb-ˈjek-tiv
The Role of Language
Outline of Topics
Mathematics as the Language of Nature
Technological World
The Printing Press and Beyond
The World Wide Web
The Role of Language
Outline of Topics
Mathematics as the Language of Nature
Technological World
The Printing Press and Beyond
The World Wide Web
THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE
In the human quest for understanding the natural world, the ability to
name and classify objects found in nature was seen as the first step in
knowing.
How is it possible that human beings can communicate through words
and thus form a community?
Does the power of communicated words come from the speaker, who is For the ancient Greeks,
the thinker and the source, or from the listener who is the recipient of the
language was an
communication?
Science “scire” (to know) is one kind of knowledge the Greeks object worthy of
wanted to understand. admiration; for
Greek's principle of everyday language: Words can function across space words have power.
and time without reducing their meaning.
language | noun • ˈlaŋ-gwij
Plato
THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE
GREEK PHILOSOPHER
• Born: 428 BCE or 427 BCE; Died: 348 BCE
or 347 BCE
• Student of Socrates; Teacher of Aristotle.
• Founder of the Academy, an academic
program that many consider to be the first
Western university.
• Philosophical texts—at least 25.
• He dedicated his life to learning and
teaching and is hailed as one of the
founders of Western philosophy.
Plato's Principle of
"One and the Many"
THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE
Refers to the underlying unity among diverse
beings in the natural world.
⎯for Plato, there is a common intrinsic
nature shared by different objects.
For Plato, there is a common intrinsic nature
shared by different objects, which determines
their real sense.
Biologists devised a way to
illustrate this principle using a
system differentiating between
genus and species.
EXAMPLE
The Role of Language
Outline of Topics
Mathematics as the Language of Nature
Technological World
The Printing Press and Beyond
The World Wide Web
Technology in the modern world
is the fruit of science
Control nature with technology
MATHEMATICS AS THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE
Isaac Newton
ENGLISH MATHEMATICIAN
• Born: January 4, 1643
• Died: March 31, 1727
• Since people have discovered the laws
and language of nature, they can develop
technology that uses these laws and
language for their benefit.
MATHEMATICS
MATHEMATICS AS THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE
Eugene Wigner
THEORETICAL PHYSICIST
• Born: November 17, 1902
• Died: January 1, 1995
• Nobel Prize Awardee in Physics
⏤contributed to the theory of the atomic
nucleus and the elementary particles. Through
the discovery and application of fundamental
symmetry principles.
MATHEMATICS AS THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE
Eugene Wigner
THEORETICAL PHYSICIST
Nature can be understood because it speaks
in the language of mathematics and the
human brain, to a certain extent, can
comprehend this language (Wigner, 1960).
Unfortunately, this fact is not always
appreciated.
The Role of Language
Outline of Topics
Mathematics as the Language of Nature
Technological World
The Printing Press and Beyond
The World Wide Web
TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD
• The ability to think & conceptually
comprehend nature and principles it
ANCIENT WESTERNERS
follows eventually leads to science.
• Western thinkers harnessed the forces
of nature after understanding them
better.
ANCIENT SAILING VESSEL
Heron of Alexandria
(Hero)
TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD
GREEK MATHEMATECIAN & ENGINEER
• Born: 10 AD
• Active in his native city of Alexandria, a part of
the Roman Empire. His work is representative
of Hellenistic-era science.
• One of his most famous inventions was an
experiment done as part of the earliest
instance of harnessing wind energy on land.
⏤ Engine powered by steam
PRIMITIVE STEAM ENGINE (1ST CENTURY)
VENDING MACHINE
The world’s first vending machine
dispensed holy water. Temple
visitors would insert a coin into
Heron’s machine that would fall
onto a lever which would open a
valve and let water flow out.
AUTOMATIC DOOR
An automatic door opening
device which used heat and
pneumatics to “magically” open
temple doors.
WIND-POWERED ORGAN
A musical instrument that used
a small wind wheel to power a
piston and force air through
organ pipes, creating sounds
and tweets, like the sound of a
flute. This device is believed to
be the first wind-powered
machine.
AUTOMATA
In 60 C.E. Heron constructed the
world’s first programmable
robots to entertain theater
audiences. He even created an
entirely mechanical ten-minute
play powered by a binary-like
system of ropes, knots, and
simple machines operated by a
rotating cylindrical cogwheel.
HERON'S FORMULA
Heron is a distinguished
mathematician who came up with
a novel method of computing the
area of a triangle, now called
Heron’s formula, and his
contributions to engineering and
technology are nothing short of
jaw-dropping.
The Role of Language
Outline of Topics
Mathematics as the Language of Nature
Technological World
The Printing Press and Beyond
The World Wide Web
THE PRINTING PRESS & BEYOND
• The ancient fascination with language
ANCIENT PRINTING PRESS
gave rise to the preservation of the words
of earlier people at the same time when
the West weakened itself due to
internecine warfare and conflicts.
The importance of word⏤the power to be
informed as human being⏤led to the
transmission of ideas through hand-copying.
⏤PRINTING PRESS
Printing Press during the 15th Century
Using the printing press, people
on different sides of the world
could share their thoughts and
ideas with each other, forming
communities of thinkers across
- CONNELL, 1958
space and time
Evolution of Media Timeline
COMPUTER
TELEGRAPH
RADIO
POSTAL SYSTEM
TELEPHONE
TYPEWRITER
CELLPHONE
Digital world is a direct
offspring of the
progressing world of
technology built upon the
many advances in
- TOFFLER, 1984
science.
EVOLUTION OF MEDIA TIMELINE
The Role of Language
Outline of Topics
Mathematics as the Language of Nature
Technological World
The Printing Press and Beyond
The World Wide Web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
COMPUTER SCIENIST
THE WORLD WIDE WEB
• He invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in
1989, while working at CERN.
Objective: To meet the demand for automated
information-sharing between scientists in
universities and institutes around the world.
• The first website went live in 1991 and went
public in 1993.
• The Internet came before the world wide web.
Robert Cailliau
INFORMATICS ENGINEER & COMPUTER
THE WORLD WIDE WEB
SCIENTIST
• He is most well known for the proposal,
developed with Tim Berners-Lee, of a hypertext
system for accessing documentation, which
eventually led to the creation of the World Wide
Web.
• In 1992, Cailliau produced the first Web
browser for the Apple Macintosh.
FIRST WEB SERVER
THE WORLD WIDE WEB
• With the ease of sharing information at present, its
reliability becomes compromised.
• Social media also encourages building a community of
like-minded people.
• Worse, these communities can be tapped by people in
power who may take advantage of these
mechanisms-controlling the public opinion and harassing
those who present opposing views-for their own
advantage.
The web does not connect
machines, it connects
people.
- SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE
THE WORLD WIDE WEB
note.
• Easy access to personal information makes one
susceptible to online predation, identity theft, and
scamming, among others.
• We must be responsible in utilizing
technologies to avoid harming others and
ourselves.
When we have all data online it
will be great for humanity. It is
a prerequisite to solving many
problems that humankind
faces.
- ROBERT CAILLIAU
THE WORLD WIDE WEB
key points.
• We have numerous means to access information in our society, like radio,
television, smartphone, and sophisticated social media.
• Social media is a complex interaction of people in which they can create, share and
exchange information and ideas in virtual communities.
• Social media has numerous forms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
• Social media has a positive and negative impact.
