MODULE 3

GEC 008- SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

SPECIFIC ISSUES IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY

This module tackles specific issues in science and technology in the context of the
information age, biodiversity and health, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and
gene therapy, nanotechnology, and climate change and environmental awareness. By
critiquing specific issues in science and technology in the context on how these affect
human lives, the module aims to empower students toward a renewed understanding and
appreciation of science and technology in the present context of society.

Activities on this module shall be accomplished and to be submitted on the

delivery of the next module.

LESSON 1: INFORMATION AGE

LESSON CONTENT

German goldsmith, Johannes Gutenberg,

invented the printing press around 1440. This
invention was a result of finding a way to improve the
manual, tedious, and slow printing methods. A
printing press is a device that applies pressure to any
inked surface lying on a print medium, such as cloth
or paper, to transfer ink. Gutenberg’s hand mound
printing press led to the creation of metal movable
type. Later, the two inventions were combined to
make printing methods faster and they drastically
reduced the costs of printing documents.

Figure 24. The Gutenberg Press

https://johannesgutenberg101.weebly.com/causeeffect.html

The beginnings of mass communication can be tracked back to the invention of the
printing press. The development of a fast and easy way of disseminating information in
print permanently reformed the structure of society. Political and religious authorities
who took pride in being learned were threatened by a sudden rise of literacy among
people. With the rise of the printing press, the printing revolution occurred which
illustrated the tremendous social change brought by the wide circulation of information.
The printing press made the mass production of books possible which made books
accessible not only to the upper class.

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 As year progressed, calculations became involved in communication due to the
rapid developments in the trade sector. Back then, people who compiled actuarial tablets
and engineering calculations served as “computers.” During World War II, the Allies
(U.S., Canada, Britain, France, USSR, Australia, etc.),
countries that opposed the Axis powers (Germany,
Japan, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria), were
challenged with a serious shortage of human
computers for military calculations. When soldiers left
for war, the shortage got worse so the United States
addressed the problem by creating the Harvard
Mark 1, a general purpose electromechanical
computer that was 50 feet long and capable of doing
calculations in seconds that usually took people hours.
At the same time, Britain needed mathematicians to
crack the German Navy’s Enigma code. The Enigma
was an enciphering machine that the German armed
forces used to securely send messages.
Figure 25: “Enigma M4” Cypher Machine
https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/enigma/m4/index.htm

Alan Turing, and English mathematicians, was hired in 1936 by the British top-secret
Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park to break the Enigma code. His
code-breaking methods became an industrial process
having 12,000 people working 24/7.
To counteract this, the Nazis made the Enigma more
complicated having approximately 10114 possible
permutations of every encrypted message. Turing,
working on the side of the Allies, invented Bombe, an
electrochemical machine that enabled the British to
decipher encrypted messages of the German Enigma
machine. This contribution of Turing along with other
cryptologists shortened the war by two years (Munro,
2012).
Figure 26: Alan Turing
https://www.biography.com/scientist/alan-turing

In this paper On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the

Entscheidungsproblem, first published in 1937, Turing presented a theoretical machine
called the Turing machine that can solve any problem from simple instructions encoded
on a paper tape. He also demonstrated the simulation of the Turing machine to construct
a single Universal Machine. This became the foundation of computer science and the
invention of a machine later called a computer, which can solve any problem by
performing any task from a written program (DeHaan, 2012).

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 In the 1970s, the generation who witnessed the dawn of the computer age was
described as the generation with “electronic brains.” The people of this generation were
the first to be introduce to personal computers (PCs). Back then, the Homebrew
Computer Club, an early computer hobbyist
group, gathered regularly to trade parts of
computer hardware and talked about how to make
computer more accessible to everyone. Many
members of the club ended up being high-profile
entrepreneurs, including the founders of Apple
Inc. in 1976 Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple
Inc., developed the computer made him famous:
the Apple I. Wozniak designed the operating
system, hardware, and circuit board of the
computer all by himself. Steve Jobs, Wozniak’s
friend, suggested to sell the Apple I as a fully
assembled printed circuit board. This jumpstarted
their career as founders of Apple Inc.
Figure 27: Apple I, also called Apple-1 or Apple Computer 1
https://www.mac-history.net/computer-history/2008-05-25/apple-i-and-apple-ii

From 1973 onwards, social media platforms were introduced from variations of
multi-user chat rooms; instant-messaging applications (e.g., AOL, Yahoo messenger,
MSN messenger, Windows messenger); bulletin-board forum systems, game-based social
networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Friendster, Myspace) and business oriented social
networking websites (e.g., Xing); messaging, video and voice calling services (e.g., Viber,
Skype); blogging platform, image and video hosting websites (e.g., Flicker); discovery and
dating-oriented websites (e.g., Tagged, Tinder); video sharing services (e.g., YouTube);
real-time social media feed aggregator (e.g., FriendFeed); live-streaming (e.g., Justin.tv,
Twitch.tv); photo-video sharing websites (e.g., Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, Keek,
Vine);and question-and-answer platforms (e.g., Quora). To date, these social media
platforms enable information exchange as its most efficient level.
The information age, which progressed from the invention of the printing press to
the development of numerous social media platforms, has immediately influenced the
lives of the people. The impact of these innovations can be advantageous or
disadvantageous depending on the use of these technologies.

THIS MODULE IS FOR THE EXCLUSIVE USE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LA SALETTE, INC. ANY FORM OF REPRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION,
UPLOADING, OR POSTING ONLINE IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE UNIVERSITY IS
STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
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