Information and Communication Technology

Are you a digital native? Let’s find out.

How many times have you checked your phone this morning?
How many status updates have you posted in Facebook or Twitter today?
Did you use the Internet for an hour after you woke up this morning?
Do you follow a celebrity via his/her social media account?

If you happen to be “guilty as charged” in most of these questions, chances are, you are a digital native. And chances are, from the moment you were born, you were surrounded by technology. You are surrounded by ICT. Digital Native is a person born or brought up during the age of digital technology and therefore familiar with computers and the Internet from an early age.

MAKing THE WORLD GO AROUND

As the famous saying goes, "Love makes the world go round." But you might argue how the Internet has made the world go round for decades before you start searching for someone to fall in love with. Likewise, the Internet has probably made your world go round in the motivation activity. In this lesson we will understand how information and communication technologies in such a short period of time have improved our lives.

What is Information and Communication Technology or ICT?

It deals with the use of different communication technologies such as mobile phones, Internet and etc. to locate, save, send, and edit information. Having a unified way to communicate is one of the goals of ICT. We spend less because of ICT.

MARK ZUCKERBERG

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder.

BILL GATES

William Henry Gates III is an American business magnate, author, investor, and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer, president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a major entrepreneur of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.

STEVE JOBS

Steven Paul Jobs was an American entrepreneur, business magnate, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT.

MARTHA LANE FOX

Martha Lane Fox, Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho, CBE is a British businesswoman, philanthropist and public servant. She co-founded Last Minute during the dotcom boom of the early 2000s and has subsequently served on public service digital projects. She sits on the boards of WeTransfer and Chanel, as well as being a trustee of The Queen's Commonwealth Trust.

TIM BERNERS LEE

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA, DFBCS, RDI, also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989, then implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol client and server via the Internet in mid-November.

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web, commonly referred to as WWW, W3, or simply the Web is an interconnected system of public webpages accessible through the Internet. It was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. Web pages are what make up the world wide web and they can either be static or dynamic.

WEB 1.0

Web pages are static and not interactive. You can’t post comments or create an account. According to Techopedia (2021), Web 1.0 is the term used for the earliest version of the Internet as it emerged from its origins with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and became, for the first time, a global network representing the future of digital communications. It describes the first “iteration” of what became a growing, evolving medium that eventually expanded into a platform with profound multi-functional uses.

WEB 2.0

This term used to describe the present generation of the World Wide Web that concentrates on its capability of providing people the means to collaborate and share information online.

The second stage in World Wide Web
Dynamic Website
The content of the website changes
Interactive
The user may be able to comment or create user account enables an increased user participation in the web
Darcy DiNucci, an information architecture consultant, coined the term Web 2.0 in her 1999 article, “Fragmented Future”.
The term was popularized by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference in late 2004 (TechTarget, 2015).

Features of Web 2.0 (tap to view)

Folksonomy - It allows users to categorize and classify/arrange information using freely chosen keywords (e.g., tagging). Popular social networking sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. use tags that start with the pound sign (#). This is also referred to as hashtag.
Rich User Experience - Content is dynamic and is responsive to user’s input. An example would be a website that shows local content. In the case of social networking sites, when logged on, your account is used to modify what you see in their website.
User Participation - The owner of the website is not the only one who is able to put content. Others are able to place a content of their own by means of comment, reviews, and evaluation. Some websites allow readers to comment on an article, participate in a poll, or review a specific product (e.g., Amazon.com, online stores).
Software as a Service - Users will subscribe to a software only when needed rather than purchasing them. This is a cheaper option if you do not always need to use a software. For instance, Google Docs is a free web-based application that allows the user to create and edit word processing and spreadsheet documents online. When you need a software, like a Word Processor, you can purchase it for a one-time huge amount and install it in your computer and it is yours forever. Software as a service allows you to “rent” a software for a minimal fee.
Mass Participation - It is a diverse information sharing through universal web access. Since most users can use the Internet, Web 2.0’s content is based on people from various cultures.

WEB 3.0

Also called as Semantic Web.

Semantics – ability of Web technologies to understand and interpret human-generated content. The aim of Web 3.0 is to have machines understand the user’s preferences to be able to deliver web content specifically targeting the user.

The Internet is able to predict the best possible answers to your question by “learning from your previous choices

Trends in ICT

As the world of ICT continues to grow, the industry has focused on several innovations. These innovations cater to the needs of the people that benefit most out from ICT. Whether it is for business or personal use, these trends are currently front-runners in the innovation of ICT.

Convergence

Technological convergence is the combination of two or more different entities of technologies to create a new single device.
Example: Using of a smartphone to create word documents that were previously can only be created using a desktop computer.

2. Social Media

It is a website, application, or online channel that enables web users to create, co-create, modify, and exchange user-generated content.

Types of Social media:

Social Networks - sites that allow you to connect with other people with the same interests or background. Examples: Facebook, Google+
Bookmarking Sites - sites that allow users to store and manage links to various websites and resources, and to tag. Examples: StumbleUpon, Pinterest
Social News - sites that allow users to post their own news items or links to other news sources. Examples: Reddit, Dig
Media Sharing - sites that allow you to upload and share media content like images, music, and video. Examples: Flickr, YouTube, and Instagram
Microblogging - sites that focus on short updates from the user. Those who are subscribed will receive updates. Examples: Twitter Plurk
Blogs and Forums - sites that allow users to post their content. Examples: Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr

3. Mobile Technologies

The popularity of smartphones and tablets has taken a major rise over the years. This is large because of the devices’ capability to do tasks that were originally found in personal computers.
Different types of mobile operating systems:
1. iOS – used in Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad
2. Android – an open-source operating system developed by Google. Being open-source means several mobile phone companies use this OS for free.
3. Blackberry OS – used in blackberry devices
4. Windows Phone OS – a closed-source and proprietary operating system developed by Microsoft
5. Symbian – the original smartphone OS used by Nokia devices
6. WebOS – originally used for smartphones; now used for smart TVs
7. Windows Mobile – developed by Microsoft for smartphones and pocket PCs.
Assistive Media. It is a nonprofit service designed to help people who have visual and reading impairments. A database of audio recordings is used to read to the user. You may visit http://assistivemedia.org/ for several of their audio recordings.

If you need to learn more about the lesson, watch the videos below:

TO SUMMARIZE:

Information and communications technology or ICT is an important part of Philippine economic growth. The Philippines is known as Asia's "ICT Hub". When the Internet was created by Tim Berners-Lee, most of the web pages were static, which are now called Web 1.0. A static Web page is a page with content that cannot be manipulated by the user. On the other hand, a dynamic web page, introduced in Web 2.0, is a page in which its contents depend on the user or the website visitor.

Web 2.0 has many main features, including folksonomy, rich user interface, user interaction, long tail services, web apps, and mass participation. Folksonomy deals with information tagging; rich user experience deals with how a site uses user information for a personalized content; user participation means that those who view the website can also put their own information; long tail services on demand as opposed to a one-time purchase; software as a service contains how user would subscribe to a software as opposed to purchasing them; and mass participation deals with diverse information sharing through universal web access.

Web 3.0 seeks to enhance Web 2.0 by implementing user-specific content through user preferences. Nonetheless, Web 3.0 implementation is hindered by several issues, namely compatibility, security, vastness, vagueness, and logic.

The trends in ICT include convergence, social media, mobile technologies, and assistive learning.

LET'S TEST YOUR LEARNING! Click the link below to take your quiz.

LESSON 1 - TEST #1

LESSON 1 - TEST 2

Reference:

- Empowerment Technologies First Edition. (2016). Sampaloc Manila: Rex Bookstore, Inc.

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