PHI THETA KAPPA

2010-2011 Honors Study Topic: The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, & Promise

The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, & Promise

The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, & Promise The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, & Promise The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, & Promise The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, & Promise The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, & Promise The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, & Promise

Timeline:

  • 25,000 - 30,000 BP - Earliest cave drawings are created.
  • 4,100 - 3,800 BCE - Earliest petroglyphs are carved.
  • 3,100 BCE - Cuneiform writing is developed in Sumeria.
  • 1,600 BCE - Writing is used in China.
  • 10th - 9th century BCE - Old Phoenician writing is developed.
  • 850 BCE - Writing is used by the Moabites.
  • 800 BCE - Early Aramaic writing comes into use.
  • 700 BCE - The Siloam Inscription is cut.
  • Circa 479 BCE - Confucius begins writing Analects.
  • Circa 425 BCE - Herodotus writes the first scientific history.
  • 360 BCE - Plato’s Republic is written.
  • Circa 300 BCE - Travel begins on the Silk Road to connect Asia with Europe for an exchange of goods.
  • Circa 170 BCE - Parchment is invented.
  • Circa 170 CE - Galen develops the Galenic doctrine, saying that health depends on a balance between bodily fluids or “humors”.
  • 258 CE - The world’s first university is founded in Nanjing, China.
  • 425 CE - The University of Constantinople, the first university in medieval Europe, is founded in Constantinople.
  • 793 CE - Paper is first made in Baghdad.
  • Circa 820 CE - Al-Ma’mun builds observatories in Iraq and Syria.
  • 9th century - In Persia, the Banu Musa brothers invent the earliest known mechanical musical instrument.
  • Circa 1230 - Vincent of Beauvais compiles an encyclopedia.
  • 15th Century - Oil paints become a popular medium for artists.
  • In 1492 - Columbus finds North America, leading to the Columbian Exchange between Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
  • Circa 1512 - Copernicus shares in a manuscript his beliefs that Earth is a planet that rotates daily and revolves around the sun.
  • 1545 - Sebastiano Serlio creates the first artificial theatrical lights using candles and polished barber’s basins as reflectors.
  • 1590 - Zacharias and Hans Janssen combine convex lenses in a tube, making the first telescope.
  • 1636 - Galileo finishes his final book, which transforms science by leading to a new approach based on observation, logic, clear language, and persuasive argument. This remains the basis of science today.
  • 1662 - The first U.S. public high school opens.
  • 1665 - Robert Hooke is the first to describe (and name) cells.
  • 1674 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek reported his discovery of protozoa.
  • 1718 - Mary Wortley Montagu promotes the inoculation against smallpox in Turkey.
  • 1751 - Benjamin Franklin publishes Experiments and Observations on Electricity in which he suggested the famous kite experiment to prove that lightning is an electrical discharge. This experiment leads to the invention of the lightning rod.
  • 1762 - Marcus Antonius Plenciz publishes his findings that living agents cause infectious diseases.
  • 1771 - Encyclopedia Britannica is first published.
  • 1773 - The Complete Library of the Treasures project attempts to compile the literary heritage of China into one collection.
  • 1774 - The first telegraph is built.
  • 1776 - Thomas Paine’s Common Sense is published.
  • 1789 - Antoine Lavoisier proves that mass is conserved in chemical reactions (Law of Conservation of Matter) and designs the first list of chemical elements.
  • 1799 - The Rosetta Stone is discovered in Egypt, allowing historians to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
  • 1807 - Robert Fulton builds the first commercially viable paddle-wheel steamboat.
  • 1809 - Sir Humphrey Davy invents electric arc stage lighting.
  • 1881 - The Savoy Theater in England becomes the first completely electric theater.
  • 1809 - Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin are born.
  • 1820 - The first commercially successful calculating machine is developed.
  • 1821 - Michael Faraday publishes the “History of the Progress of Electro-Magnetism,” which leads to the development of the electric motor.
  • 1831 - Michael Faraday publishes Experimental Researches in Electricity, revealing how to produce electricity from magnetism (electromagnetic induction), which is the principle of the dynamo (electric generator).
  • 1833 - Karl Friedrich Gauss invents the electric telegraph.
  • 1846 - William Morton introduced ether as an effective anesthetic.
  • 1848 - The Seneca Falls Convention issues the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments.
  • 1851 - Hermann von Helmholtz invents the ophthalmoscope for examining the vessels inside the eye.
  • 1853 - Alexander Wood introduces the hypodermic syringe, which is later used to administer morphine during the American Civil War.
  • 1853 - Florence Nightingale first recommends a strict regimen of cleanliness, triggering a dramatic drop in the mortality rates in hospitals.
  • 1859 - Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, which remains the classic explanation of natural selection and the theory of evolution.
  • 1862 - Louis Pasteur publishes the ‘germ theory,’ which states that infection is caused by self-replicating microorganisms and that exposure to attenuated cultures of viruses confers immunity. In the same year, he tests the process later to take his name -pasteurization- which reduces the number of microorganisms in a food to extend its shelf life and reduce food-borne illness.
  • 1865 - Joseph Lister uses carbolic acid as an antiseptic and to sterilize his instrument, ushering in antiseptic surgery.
  • 1866 - The first successful Trans-Atlantic cable is laid.
  • 1866 - Gregor Mendel publishes his work interpreting heredity as arising from the pairing of dominant and/or recessive unit characters, which gives rise to modern genetics.
  • 1869 - John Hyatt produces celluloid, the first widely used synthetic plastic.
  • 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
  • Circa 1876 - Robert Koch uses dyes to stain microorganisms, allowing him to isolate pure cultures of bacteria and demonstrate the bacterial origin of many diseases, confirming the germ theory of disease.
  • 1877 - Thomas Edison’s machinist, John Kruesi, constructs the phonograph.
  • 1879 - Thomas Edison invents an incandescent light bulb that burns for 13 hours.
  • 1879 - Walther Flemming introduces the terms “chromatin” and “mitosis,” ascertains accurate chromosome counts, and discovers their separation.
  • 1883 - Gottlieb Daimler patents the gasoline combustion engine.
  • 1888 - Nicola Tesla patents alternating electric current.
  • Circa 1890 - Herman Hollerith invents a punch-card counter, used in the 1890 U.S. Census, and founds the company that would later become IBM.
  • 1893 - New Zealand becomes the first independent nation to give universal suffrage to women.
  • 1895 - Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen discovers a new form of penetrating radiation that he names X-rays.
  • 1895 - Guglielmo Marconi sends longwave wireless telegraphic (radio) signals over a mile.
  • 1895 - Louis Lumiere invents the first motion picture camera.
  • 1897 - Felix Hoffman creates a form of acetylsalicylic acid that leads to mass production of aspirin two years later.
  • 1901 - Oliver Heaviside and Arthur Edwin Kennelly independently predict an atmospheric layer (ionosphere) that would reflect radio waves. Relying on this, a year later Guglielmo Marconi successfully sends radio signals over the Atlantic Ocean.
  • 1901 - The first radio message is sent across the Atlantic in Morse code.
  • 1903 - Independently, Theodor Bovari and Walter Sutton identify chromosomes as the likely genetic material to which Mendel’s work had alluded, based on the chromosomes movements in cell division, reduction in germ cell formation, and pairing again in fertilization.
  • 1903 - Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully fly their gas-driven, heavier-than-air flying machine.
  • 1905 - Svante Arrhenius expresses concern about global warming arising from the burning fossil fuels.
  • 1905 - Albert Einstein finalizes and publishes his work on the Special Theory of Relativity.
  • 1906 - The Food and Drug Administration begins operations.
  • 1907 - Einstein, in another publication, puts forth the equivalence of mass and energy, now know by the equation E=mc2.
  • 1908 - Godfrey Hardy publishes the equilibrium formula for a population that contains two varieties (alleles) for a single gene. The mathematical formula is independently derived by Wilhelm Weinberg, and their combined work is now known as the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium formula. It provided the first baseline for assessing the effects of genetic mutation, and forms the basis of the study of population genetics.
  • 1916 - Jazz sweeps the U.S.
  • 1920 - The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, giving women the right to vote in all state and national elections.
  • 1921 - Frederick Grant Banting and Charles Herbert Best isolate insulin from pancreatic secretions and administer it to a presumably terminally ill patient who survives.
  • 1922 - Elmer Verner McCollum and his team show that lack of vitamin D is the cause of rickets.
  • 1927 - Television is invented.
  • 1928 - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.
  • 1929 - Frank Whittle invents jet propulsion.
  • 1930 - Ernest Orlando Lawrence publishes his work on the cyclotron, which uses a magnetic field to curl the particle trajectory, permitting atomic acceleration to high speeds resulting in nuclear reactions.
  • 1932 - John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest T. S. Walton build the first linear accelerator and use it to produce the first artificial nuclear reaction.
  • 1936 - Conrad Zuse creates one of the first binary digital computers controlled through a punch tape.
  • 1937 - Wallace Hume Carothers’ investigations of petrochemical polyamides leads to the production of nylon fibers. His employer, DuPont, along with the pulp wood industry, launches a campaign to suppress competition from the hemp industry in the U.S., using the excuse of suppressing marijuana, and is able to outlaw hemp production that same year.
  • 1939 - Hewlett Packard is founded.
  • 1939 - Vannevar Bush proposes the ‘Memex’ associative information retrieval system, which leads to “hypertext” and the “World Wide Web.” Bush envisions this operating system at work on an electric analog computer, will be completed in 1942.
  • 1939 - Marian Anderson sings on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
  • 1940s - Guitarist Les Paul, working with engineers from the Ampex Corporation, creates the first multi-track sound recorder.
  • 1941 - Vannevar Bush directs the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, overseeing mass production of sulfa drugs and penicillin, development of the atomic bomb (The Manhattan Project), and perfection of radar. The work of those under him leads to development of the semiconductor that is later used in transistors.
  • 1942 - Enrico Fermi creates the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction as part of the Manhattan Project.
  • 1944 - The work of Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty establishes deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as the hereditary material.
  • 1945 - Erwin Schrodinger’s publication, What is Life?, asks questions about genetics and metabolism that sets biology’s agenda for the next 30 years.
  • 1946 - Willard Frank Libby develops the technique of radioactive carbon-14 dating that continues to allow us to determine the age of fossils and anthropological discoveries, piecing together our history.
  • 1946 - ENIAC, the world’s first electronic computing machine, is built.
  • 1948 - Television is commercially available.
  • 1949 - George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-Four.
  • 1950 - Ernst Wynder and Evarts Graham publish, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, data indicating a strong correlation between lung cancer and smoking.
  • 1953 - James Watson and Francis Crick determine the double helix structure of DNA, explaining the mechanism of replication. With this discovery, the basis of heredity switches from location to information that is encoded in the structure.
  • 1953 - Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman correlate the regularly occurring periods of rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep and with periods of vivid and emotional dreaming, ushering in a new era of research on the relation of the brain and the mind.
  • 1953 - Simone de Beauvoir publishes the landmark feminist book, The Second Sex.
  • 1954 - Jonas Salk’s development of the polio vaccine leads to dramatic drops in the incidence after mass immunization the following year.
  • 1956 - Arthur Kornberg discovers DNA polymerase, one enzyme responsible for DNA synthesis, which is now used to make DNA probes.
  • 1951 - The first commercial computer is built in Manchester, England.
  • 1951 - UNIVAC, the first commercial computer in the U.S., is built.
  • 1953 - The first IBM computer is introduced.
  • 1954 - CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is established.
  • 1954 - The Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision is handed down.
  • 1955 - The term “artificial intelligence” is coined.
  • 1956 - Sony exports its first products, to Canada.
  • 1956 - Elvis Presley records his first record.
  • 1957 - IBM introduces first transistor-based computer.
  • 1957 - Sputnik is launched by Russia.
  • 1957 - John Backus leads the team that creates the Formula Translation language (Fortran) for the IBM 704 computer.
  • 1958 - The first microchip is demonstrated.
  • 1958 - President Dwight Eisenhower’s Christmas address is the first voice transmission from a satellite.
  • 1962 - John B. Gurdon demonstrates totipotency - the theory that a fully differentiated cell still contains the genetic information to direct development of all cells in the animal — by replacing the nuclei of fertilized frogs’ egg with a cell from a tadpole’s intestine. The frogs grown in this way were genetically identical - they were clones.
  • 1962 - Rachel Louise Carson publishes Silent Spring, about the dangers of pesticides.
  • 1962 - The first industrial robot company, Unimation, is founded.
  • 1963 - T.G. Evans’ program, ANALOGY, stemming from his PhD work at MIT, proves that computers can solve analogy problems like those on IQ tests.
  • 1965 - Cambridge Instruments produces the first commercial scanning electron microscope.
  • 1965 - Hypertext is developed.
  • 1967 - The first floppy disk is developed.
  • 1967 - Arthur Samuels builds a computerized checkers player that can model its opponent’s options, recognize tactics, and make predictions.
  • 1968 - UCLA is selected as the first of what today we know as an Internet node.
  • 1969 - COMPUSERVE, the first commercial online service, is established.
  • 1969 - A robot named Shakey that can move, demonstrate perception, and solve problems is unveiled. The same year the First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) is held in Washington, D.C.
  • 1970 - INTEL introduces the first microprocessor.
  • 1970 - The first ATM is demonstrated and used in Georgia.
  • 1971 - The first edition of UNIX is released.
  • 1972 - Computerized axial tomography (CAT scanning) is introduced.
  • 1972 - Ray Tomlinson creates the first electronic mail (email) program.
  • 1973 - Vinton Cerf and Robert E. Kahn begin development of a protocol, later called TCP/IP, allowing computer networks to communicate with each other.
  • 1974 - Henry Jay Heimlich, in Emergency Medicine, describes the Heimlich Maneuver, which has sharply reduced choking deaths.
  • 1975 - Microsoft is founded.
  • 1976 - Robert Swanson and Herbert Boyer found Genentech for genetic research, on the belief that patents could prevent business secrecy, attracting academic scientists who could still publish their work.
  • 1977 - Walter Gilbert induces bacteria to produce the non-bacterial proteins insulin and interferon.
  • 1977 - Television signals are transmitted on optical fibers.
  • 1977 - Robert Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, is published.
  • 1979 - Warner Brothers Records released the first digitally recorded album of popular music, “Bop ‘Til You Drop” by guitarist Ry Cooder.
  • 1980 - David Botstein, Ray White, Mark Skolnick, and Ronald Davis show how “restriction fragment length polymorphisms” (RFLPs) can be employed to locate human disease genes.
  • 1980 - CNN is launched.
  • 1981 - MTV is launched.
  • 1981 - Programmers at Microsoft Corporation develope a computer disk operating system, MS-DOS.
  • 1981 - WordPerfect is introduced as the first word processing application.
  • 1982 - The Commodore 64, the best selling computer of all time, is marketed.
  • 1983 - Microsoft Windows is announced.
  • 1983 - The population of China reaches 1 billion.
  • 1984 - IBM introduces first portable computer.
  • 1984 - Alec John Jeffreys develops “genetic fingerprinting,” the process that examines the pattern of unique DNA sequences in individuals, which now has widespread use in legal cases.
  • 1985 - Kary Banks Mullis and co-workers invent the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that multiplies DNA sequences allowing the cloning of specific DNA sequences rapidly without the need of a living cell.
  • 1987 - Leroy Hood’s lab introduces an automated DNA synthesizer.
  • 1987 - James van House and Arthur Rich invent the positron microscope.
  • 1990 - W. French Anderson performsd the first human gene transplant.
  • 1990 - Andrew Bell, David Brown, and Nicholas Terrett patent “sildenafil citrate,” a drug designed to dilate arteries to reduce or eliminate angina by increasing blood flow. The drug, also marketed as Viagra, effectively treats many cases of erectile dysfunction as well.
  • 1990 - The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) launch the Hubble Space Telescope.
  • 1990 - Tim Berners-Lee and CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research, launch a hypertext system to allow information access for physicists.
  • 1992 - CERN releases their hypertext for physicists to the public, renaming it the World Wide Web.
  • 1997 - Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell clone a sheep, Dolly, from adult cells.
  • 1997 - The Deep Blue computer chess program beats then-world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.
  • 1998 - Growth factor genes are inserted in a human heart and stimulate formation of new blood vessels.
  • 1998 - James Thomson and Ariff Bongso independently isolate human embryonic stem cells.
  • 1998 - Google is founded.
  • 2000 - A.L. Vescovi’s research team demonstrate that mouse brain stem cells that came into physical contact with muscle cells can turn into muscle cells.
  • 2001 - Craig Ventner of Celera Genomics and Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project jointly publish their decoding of the human genome. Their rapid sequencing progress is permitted by the automatic sequencer ABI PRISM 3700 DNA Analyzer, developed by Michael Hunkapiller. Assembling the fragments of the genome into a complete sequence depended on computer programs developed by Phillip Green.
  • 2002 - Enron declares bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history.
  • 2002 - American Idol debuts.
  • 2003 - The Human Genome Project, a public endeavor, is officially completed ahead of schedule and only 50 years after the structure of DNA was discovered.
  • 2003 - MySpace is founded.
  • 2004 - Facebook is founded.
  • 2004 - Wikipedia is founded.
  • 2005 - YouTube is founded.
  • 2006 - No Child Left Behind Act is implemented.
  • 2007 - Apple releases the iPhone.
  • 2007 - Twitter is founded.