Abstract
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
Universally, people have used development as another word for either or all of the following forms: Industrialization Modernization, Technological Advancement. Whenever we talk about development the first thing that comes to our minds are such structural edifices as skyscrapers, cars, electronic gadgets, and the like. Today social scientists would hesitate to endorse such a narrow view of development, not with the failure of science and Electronic System to redeem man and his society. In the words of Schumacher (2003); development does not start with goods, it starts with people and their education, organization and discipline.
According to Brahma and Odiaran (1985) the age in which we now live is charactized by what has been called the “Information Explosion,” notably as a result of the advent of modern Sophisticated Communication hardware which has reduced the world into a form of global Village. Electronic system, can be labeled the catalyst which when applied to any form of life endeavour, particularly that dealing with social change would bring about improved communications technology and globalization. Both the electronic systems and the technological hardware are used as an extension of man in the dissemination of information. This will aid in the sharing of ideas with a vast majority of people in different location without the fidelity of the message being affected.
A computer is a machine that performs tasks, such as calculations or electronic communication, under the control of a set of instructions called a program. Programs usually reside within the Electronic System and retrieved and processed by the computer’s electronics. Computers perform variety of activities, reliably, accurately and quickly. They also entertain, creating digitized sound on stereo systems or computer-animated features, from a digitally encoded leiser disc. The computer is usually employed in sophisticated communications to encode and unscramble messages, and to keep track of personnel and supplies. Therefore, the increase on the use of Electronic System in diverse areas of human endeavors. The history of the development of computer show that, so far, no industrialized nation has been able to make it without the use of computers. It is hardly surprising therefore, that even in developing countries like Nigeria. The use of computers is generally and gradually becoming the rule rather than an exception. Most certainly, computers have come to stay.
However, communication and its technologies have always developed as a social product, the dialectic, material and result of extended human interaction. In their application, communication technologies have been used as political and cultural tools by competing social groups, and then involves as part of the social process of use, change, contestation and group interest. Satellites may be globally influential, even revolution any (albi not in the way that literacy changed cognition and tradition); still, satellite communication, like oil communication, depends on who controls, who employs, who has access, and how is it used. “No technology by itself, can act on a social order without human agents (Hobsbowm, 2004).