The Information Age 4

INTRODUCTION

The information age voted for many inventions and innovations. According to
James Robert Messenger, the Father of the information age, “the Information Age is a
truly new age based upon the interrelationship of computers via telecommunications. With
these information structures operating on both 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.”

Many different inventions came about, and the Internet is one of the
breakthroughs. The Internet allowed people to gather and share information in just one
click. It also improves education quality, provides effective communication, and offers a
progressive approach in our daily lifestyle. On the other hand, it changes how we
communicate verbally and how we write messages such that we don't care about the
proper grammar and spelling of words anymore. Creating and sharing information through
social media made different standpoints in our way of life, either positively or
depressingly.

In this module, we will expound the effects of social media on our lives. How social
media formed and various laws related to its use.

I.
II.

OBJECTIVES

The students will be able to:

1. Link learned concepts to the progress of the information age and its impact on
society.
2. Illustrate how social media and the information age have impacted our lives.
DISCUSSION

The Internet, Computers, and other information technologies are exceptionally

powerful tools. As such, they have great potential both to benefit and to harm societies
that embrace them. Interacting with friends and family across countries has been a priority
of humans for hundreds of years. People have always depended on communication to
strengthen their relationships. When directly facing discussions are impossible or
inconvenient, humans have dreamed up many creative solutions.

The Birth of Social Media: Before and Today

The roots of social media stretch far more in-depth than you would possibly
imagine. However, it looks like a replacement trend; sites like Facebook are the natural
outcome of the many centuries of social media advancement.

Social Media Before 1900

The earliest methods of communicating and connecting across great distances

used written correspondence delivered by hand from individual to another. In other words,
letters. The primeval form of postal service dates back to 550 B.C., and this primitive
delivery system would become more extensive and streamlined in future centuries.

In 1972 the telegraph was invented. It allowed messages to be forwarded over a

long distance far quicker than a horse and rider could carry them. Although telegraph
information was short, they were a revolutionary method to convey news and knowledge.

Although no longer well-known outside of drive-through banking, the pneumatic

post, developed in 1865, was created differently for letters to be delivered instantly
between recipients. A pneumatic post utilizes below ground pressurized air tubes to carry
capsules from one area to another. (Smallbiztrends.com/2013/05/the-complete-history-
of-social-media-infographic.html)

In the last decade of the 1800s, two important discoveries happened, the
telephone in 1890 and the following year, 1891, radio was invented.

Both technologies are far more sophisticated than their antecedents. Telephone
lines and radio signals empowered people to speak across great distances
instantaneously, which humankind had never experienced earlier.

Social Media in the 20th Century

Technology began to change very swiftly in the 20th Century. After creating the
primary supercomputers within the 1940s, scientists and engineers started to develop
ways to make networks between those computers, which later caused the Internet to
arise.

During the 1960s, the earliest forms of the Internet, such as CompuServe, were
developed. And during this time, primitive sorts of the email was also developed.
Networking technology had improved in the 70s, and UseNet granted users to speak
through a virtual newsletter in the 1970s.

Home computers were becoming more ordinary, and social media was becoming
more sophisticated during the 1980s. Internet relay chats, or IRCs, were first utilized in
1988 and continued to be famous well into the 1990s.

The first distinguishable social media site, Six Degrees, was developed in 1997. It
permitted users to upload a profile and make friends with other users. In 1999, the primary
blogging sites became popular, creating a social media sensation that’s still popular
today.

Social Media Now

After the creation of blogging, social media began to break out in popularity. Sites
like Myspace and Linked acquired prominence in the early 2000s, and sites like
Photobucket and Flickr facilitated online photo sharing. YouTube soared in 2005, creating
an entirely new way for people to connect and share across great ranges.

Twitter and Facebook both became available to users throughout the planet in
2006. These sites remain the foremost popular social networks on the web. Other sites
like Pinterest, Spotify, Foursquare, and Tumblr began going up to fill specific social
networking niches.

Today, there’s an incredible sort of social networking site, and numerous are often
linked to permit cross-posting. These create an environment where users can reach the
maximum number of individuals without sacrificing personal communication intimacy. We
can only speculate about what the future of social networking may look like within the next
decade or maybe 100 years from now, but it seems clear that it will be present in some
scheme for as long as humans are breathing.

The Impact of Social Media to Society

Social media is a mighty revolution that has changed our lives. It has changed how
we socialize, conduct our businesses, engage in political affairs, shape professions, and
set job recruitments.

According to 2019 Social Media Statistics, these are the significant ways that these
platforms have impacted our society:

1. Socialization

How people socialize has been dramatically revolutionized with platforms like
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It has made it effortless to connect to our relatives,
friends and family members on an actual time basis. With social media, humans can share
pictures and videos and communicate with their close ones. It has strengthened
relationships, bringing families together in a way that was not possible in the past.

Families, friends, relatives, and businesses can share skills and improve on different
abilities. Additionally, humans get to make and meet new acquaintances.

2. Business

Businesses have significantly impacted social media — from marketing to

interacting with customers on a timely basis. A place that has entwined the use of social
media has a definite edge over its opponents. The online platforms are a less extravagant
way for businesses to advertise their offerings on a real-time basis and attract more
customers. It has made it uncomplicated for companies to reach a broader customer base
and improve customer loyalty through different programs. Easy access to customers
gives businesses the advantage to retain existing customers as well as to attract more.
It leads to excellent market share and more significant profit margins, and some
good bucks for businesses.

Through interaction and feedback by businesses to their customers, they can

understand the market quickly, adopt new strategies, and conform to the dynamic
customer's tastes and demands.

3. Politics

Social media has impacted politics in some ways. Nowadays, most people get
their news; in some cases, this is often before the media houses do. It's the medium that
provides the most uncomplicated access to political and other information. These online
platforms also grant people to air out their political grievances to their political leaders and
demand actions. Forming political rallies, administering campaigns, and even political
unrest felt in this medium.

4. Job Hiring

Social media has impacted job recruitments significantly. The bulk of companies
make their hiring decisions supported one's social portfolio. Scouts also use online
networks to post job vacancies through which they get their ideal candidates. It's also
made it easy for job seekers to urge access to job posts. This is often evident on
platforms like LinkedIn, where job aspirant can create their profile consisting their skills
and see what job opportunities recruiters are posting.

5. Education

Multitude skills and professions are built and learned through social
media. There's a considerable increase in online learning, also referred to as the "new
normal education," where one can quickly learn a skill and build a robust profession
around it. The presence of social media has led to a rise within the number of
individuals undertaking distance learning, also as academic offerings.

The Negative Impacts of Social Media

 There are, however, downside impacts caused by social media. Regardless of it
being a platform through which we socialize, run our business, and understand politics,
here are some negative results to require into consideration:

a. Through sharing personal information, one's privacy is in danger of

impersonations, theft, and stalking — among other vices. Nowadays, companies
use social media to measure job seekers. Posting anything abusive or
embarrassing could cause you to lose those job opportunities, because 'the
internet never forgets.'
b. Online social platforms are irresistible, and this has drastically reduced productivity
at the workplace. These impacts negatively on companies as they incur losses.
c. Some people — especially the introverts — rely on the virtual world as against the
vital world.
d. Since information travels faster online, a bit of false information or “fake news”
could quickly reach an enormous number of individuals and cause great panic
among the recipients.
e. Cyberbullying is another worrying impact on social media. The effect of
cyberbullying have seen victims falling into depression and, in additional radical
cases, has cost them their lives.

The Cybercrime Law

Cybercrime, also called computer crime, uses a computer as an instrument to

further illegal ends, like committing fraud, trafficking in kiddie porn and property, stealing
identities, or violating privacy. Cybercrime, primarily through the web, has grown in
importance because the computer has become central to commerce, entertainment, and
government.

Most cybercrime is an assault on information about individuals, corporations, or

governments. Although the attacks don't happen on a human body, they happen on the
private or corporate virtual body. In other words, within the digital age, our virtual
identities are essential feature of everyday life: we are an array of numbers and identifiers
in multiple computer databases possessed by governments and corporations.
Cybercrime focuses on the centrality of networked computers in our lives and the fragility
of such seemingly solid facts as individual identity.
In 1996 the Council of Europe and side government representatives from the US,
Canada, and Japan, drafted an initial treaty covering computer crime. Around the globe,
civil libertarian groups immediately protested provisions within the treaty requiring
Internet service providers (ISPs) to store data on their customers' transactions and show
this information over demand. Work on the treaty proceeded nevertheless, and on
November 23, 2001, the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime was signed by 30
states. The convention came into effect in 2004. Additional protocols, covering terrorist
activities and racist and xenophobic cybercrimes, were proposed in 2002 and came into
effect in 2006. additionally, various national laws, like the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001,
have expanded law enforcement’s power to watch and protect computer networks.
The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 was officially documented as Republic Act
No. 10175, a law within the Philippines, and approved on September 12, 2012. It aims
to deal with legal issues concerning online interactions and, therefore, the Philippines'
Internet. Among the cybercrime offenses or punishable acts includes the following:
 A. Offenses against the integrity, confidentiality and availability of computer
data and systems:
1. Illegal access – the access to the entire or any a part of a computing
system with no permission.
2. Illegal Interception – the interception created by technical ways without right
of any non-public transmission of computer data to, from, or within a computing
system including electromagnetic emissions from a computing system carrying
such computer data.
3. Data Interference - the intentional or irresponsible alteration, damaging,
deletion or deterioration of computer network, electronic document, or
electronic data message, with no permission, including virus introduction or
transmittal.
4. System Interference — the intentional modification or irresposible hindering
or interference with the operating of a computer or computer network by
damaging, inputting, transmitting, deleting, altering deteriorating, or
suppressing computer program or data, electronic data message or electronic
document, without the right or authority, including the introduction or
transmission of viruses.
5. Misuse of Devices - the use, production, sale, procurement, importation,
distribution, or otherwise making available, without right, of:
(a) A device, including a computer program, designed primarily to commit any
of the offenses under this Act; or
(b) A computer password, access code, or similar data by which the whole or
any part of a computer system is capable of being accessed with the intent that
it be used for the purpose of committing any of the offenses under this Act.
6. Cybersquatting – the obtaining of a domain name over the Internet in bad faith
to profit, mislead, destroy the reputation, and deprive others of registering the
same, if such a domain name is:
(a) Similar, identical, or confusingly similar to an existing trademark registered
with the appropriate government agency at the time of the domain name
registration:
(b) Identical or in any way similar with the name of a person other than the
registrant, in case of a personal name; and
(c) Acquired without right or with intellectual property interests in it.

B. Computer-related Offenses:
1. Computer-related Forgery — the input, alteration, or deletion of any computer
data without right leading to inauthentic data with the intent that it's considered or
acted upon for legal aim as if it were authentic, despite everything whether or not
the information is directly readable and intelligible; or, the Act of knowingly using
computer data and that the product of computer-related forgery as defined herein,
for the aim of perpetuating a fraudulent or deceitful design or plan.
2. Computer-related fraud — the unapproved input, alteration, or deletion of
computer data or program or interference within the functioning of a computing
system, causing injury thereby with fraudulent intent: Provided that if no damage
has yet been caused, the punishment imposable shall be one degree under.
3. Computer-related Identity Theft – the willful acquisition, use, misuse, transfer,
possession, alteration or deletion of identifying information belonging to
 somebody, whether natural or juridical, without right: Provided, That if no injury
has yet been caused, the punishment imposable shall be one degree under.

C. Content-related Offenses:
1. Cybersex — the intentional engagement, maintenance, control, or operation,
directly or indirectly, of any lascivious exhibition of sexual organs or sexual deed,
with the help of a computer system, for consideration or favor.
2. Child Pornography — the prohibited or unlawful acts defined and punishable
bythe Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009 or Republic Act No. 9775, committed
through a computer system: Provided, That the penalty to be imposed shall be
(1) one degree beyond that provided for in Republic Act No. 9775.
3. Unsolicited Commercial Communications — the transmission of
economic transmission with the utilization of a computing system which seeks to
advertise, sell or offer purchasable products and services are prohibited unless:
(a) there's prior confirmative consent from the recipient; or (b) the first intent of
the communication is for service and administrative announcements from the
sender to its existing users, subscribers or customers; or (c) the following
conditions are present:
(1) The commercial transmission contains an easy, valid, and reliable way
for the recipient to reject. Receipt of further commercial electronic
messages (opt-out) from an equivalent source;
(2) The commercial transmission doesn't purposely disguise the origin of
the electronic news; and
(3)The commercial communication doesn't intentionally include
misleading information in any part of the message to induce the
recipients to read the statement.
4. Libel — the unlawful or prohibited acts of libel as defined in Article 355 of the
Revised Penal Code, as amended, committed through a computer system, or any
other similar means which can devise within the future.

D. Other Offenses
1. Aiding or Abetting in the Commission of Cybercrime – any person who willfully
abets or aids in the commission of any offenses enumerated in this Act shall be
held liable.
2. Attempt in the Commission of Cybercrime — any person who consciously
attempts to commit any of the crimes listed in this Act shall be held accountable.
Individuals found guilty of cybersex face a jail term of prison mayor (6 years and
one day to 12 years) or a fine of at least P200,000 but not exceeding P1 million.

Child pornography via computer carries a penalty one degree above that provided
by RA 9775 or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009. Under RA 9775, those producing,
disseminating, or distributing child pornography will be fined from P50 000 to P5 million
and slapped a maximum jail term of reclusion perpetua or 20 to 40 years.

Persons found guilty of unsolicited communication face arresto mayor (imprisonment for
one month and one day to 6 months) or a fine of at least P50 000 but not more than P250,
000 or both.

On March 02, 2020, the first guilty verdict in a cyber-libel case returned against a
local politician, Archie Yongco, of Aurora, Zamboanga del Sur. He was found guilty of
falsely accusing another local politician of murder-for-hire via a Facebook post, which he
deleted minutes later. The court was unconvinced by his denial that he posted the
message, and he was sentenced to eight years in jail and ordered to pay damages of
₱610,000 (US$12,175).

Figure 1. Opportunities created by Information Age

SUMMARY

This chapter emphasize the following topics:

a. About the birth of social media, before and today;
b. The positive and negative impacts of social media, and
c. The Cybercrime Law in the Philippines.

SUGGESTED READINGS AND WEBSITES

● https://www.powerreviews.com/blog/benefits-of-instagram/
● https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/09/the-information-age-is-over-welcome-to-the-
experience-
age/#:~:text=Twenty%2Dfive%20years%20after%20the,call%20the%20%E2%80
%9CExperience%20Age.%E2%80%9D
● https://www.unodc.org/e4j/en/cybercrime/module-3/key-issues/the-role-of-
cybercrime-law.html
GLOSSARY

The idea that access to and the control of information is

Information age the defining characteristic of this current era in human
civilization.

Websites and applications that enable users to create and

Social media share content or to participate in social networking.

Criminal activities carried out by means of computers or the

Cybercrime internet.

Cybercrime law identifies standards of acceptable

behaviour for information and communication technology
(ICT) users; establishes socio-legal sanctions for
cybercrime; protects ICT users, in general, and mitigates
and/or prevents harm to people, data, systems, services,
Cybercrime Law and infrastructure, in particular; protects human rights;
enables the investigation and prosecution of crimes
committed online (outside of traditional real-world settings);
and facilitates cooperation between countries on cybercrime
matters (UNODC, 2013, p. 52).

REFERENCES

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