Transcript William Sawyer

Your Digital World
McGraw-Hill/Irwin
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
IT & Your Life: The Future Now
 Information Technology (IT) describes any technology that
helps to produce, manipulate, store, communicate, and/or
disseminate information
 When Computer and Communication Technologies are
combined, the result is Information Technology
 Computer Technology: A computer is a programmable,
multiuse machine that accepts data—raw facts and figures—and
processes, or manipulates, it into information we can use, such
as summaries, totals, or reports
 Communications technology, also called telecommunications
technology , consists of electromagnetic devices and systems for
communicating over long distances.
Education: The Promise of More Interactive
& Individualized Learning
 Today information technology is universal on college
campuses, and at lower levels the internet has penetrated
99% of schools
 Most college students have been exposed to computers since
the lower grades.
 When properly integrated into the curriculum and classroom,
information technology can (1) allow students to personalize
their education; (2) automate many tedious and rote tasks of
teaching and managing classes; and (3) reduce the teacher’s
workload per student, so that he or she can spend more time
 on reaching individual students.
 Besides using the internet to help in teaching, today’s
college instructors also use presentation graphics software
such as PowerPoint to show their lecture outlines and
other materials on classroom screens
 One of the developments in education at all levels is the
rise of distance learning, or e-learning, the name given to
online education programs
Health: High Tech for Wellness
 Telemedicine: Medical care delivered via
telecommunications
 Computer technology is radically changing the tools of
medicine. All medical information, including that
generated by X ray, lab test, and pulse monitor can now
be transmitted to a doctor in digital format.
 3D Computer models allow accurate tumor location
inside a skull
 Use of various robots —automatic devices that perform
functions ordinarily performed by human beings
Money: Towards the Cashless Society
 Virtual means something that is created, simulated, or
carried on by means of a computer or a computer
network
 Making online payments through credit card,
micropayment or Pay Pal etc
Leisure: Infotech in Entertainment & the Arts
 Videogames
 Downloading
 Movies
 Music
IT in Government & Democracy
 The internet and information technology have helped
government deliver better services and have paved the way
for making governmental operations more transparent to the
public
 The internet is also changing the nature of politics, enabling
political candidates and political interest groups to connect with
voters in new ways
 Govts put their budgets & expenses online for the public
 Websites are available for public to pay taxes, vehicle registration,
drivers license
Jobs & Careers
 Today almost every job and profession requires computer skills
of some sort. Some are ordinary jobs in which computers are
used as ordinary tools.
 Others are specialized jobs in which advanced computer
training combined with professional training gives people
dramatically new kinds of careers.
INFOTECH IS ALL-PERVASIVE: Cellphones,
Email, the Internet, & the E-World
1) The Phone Grows up
 Cellphone mania has swept the world
 Smartphones in their various forms enable you not only
to make voice calls but also to send and receive text
messages, browse the World Wide Web, and obtain
news, research, music, photos, movies, and TV
programs
Discussion Question: Why are cellphones banned in high-security military
2) Email’s Mass Impact
 No technology has ever become so universal so fast as this
Email technology
 One of the first things new computer and internet users
generally learn is how to send and receive email
3) The Internet, the World Wide Web, & the
“Plumbing of Cyberspace”
 As the success of the cellphone shows, communications has
extended into every hook and corner of civilization (with
poorer nations actually the leaders in cellphone growth)
 .”
 a development called the “plumbing of cyberspace”
 Cyberspace encompasses not only the online world and the
internet in particular but also the whole wired and wireless
world of communications in general
 The two most important aspects of cyberspace are the
internet and the World Wide Web. The internet—“the
mother of all networks” is a worldwide computer network
that connects hundreds of thousands of smaller networks.
These networks link educational, commercial, nonprofit,
and military entities, as well as individuals
 While World Wide Web is an interconnected system of
servers that support specially formatted documents in
multimedia form and includes text, still images, moving
images, sound
Understanding Your Own Computer
 3 key concepts
1) Purpose of a computer
 Turn data into information
 Data: the raw facts and figures
 Information: data that has been summarized and
manipulated for use in decision making
2) Hardware vs. Software
 Hardware is the machinery and equipment in the
computer while software is the electronic
instructions that tell the computer how to perform a
3) The basic operations


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Input: What goes in to the computer system. Input devices
include mouse, keyboard
Processing: The manipulation a computer does to transform
data into information. Mother board is a processing device
Storage:


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Output: What comes out

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Temporary storage: Memory is primary storage. Examples are
RAM and ROM
Permanent storage: Disks and media such as DVDs and CDs
are secondary storage
Numbers or pictures on the screen, printouts, sounds. Output
devices are printer, monitor and speakers
Communications: Sending and receiving data. Modem
(both internal and external) is a communication device
Software
1) System Software (Operating System)
 Must be installed before application software. Linux,
Windows and Unix are some of the examples
2) Application Software
 Each software designed for a specific task. For
example MS.Excel is an application software because
its designed to create a table/tables and use a large
variety of formulas on this table/tables
Future of Information Technology
 3 directions of Computer Development
1) Miniaturization: The miniaturized processor, or
microprocessor, in a personal desktop computer today
can perform calculations that once required a computer
filling an entire room
2) Speed: Computers are now providing faster processing
speeds and more data storage capacity.
2) Affordability: Processor costs today are only a
 3 directions of Communications Development
1) Connectivity: Refers to the connection of computers to
one another by a communications line in order to
provide online information access and/or the sharing of
peripheral devices
2) Interactivity: Refers to two-way communication; the
user can respond to information he or she receives and
modify what a computer is doing.
 3)Multimedia: Refers to technology that presents
 information in more than one medium—such as text,
pictures, video, sound, and animation—in a single integrated
communication
When Computers & Communications Combine:
Convergence, Portability, Personalization,
Collaboration, & Cloud Computing
1) Convergence: the combination of
 Computers
 Consumer electronics
 Entertainment
 Mass media
2) Portability
3) Personalization
4) Collaboration: software that allows people to share
anything instantly and enhance the information along the
way
5) Cloud Computing: Means that, instead of storing your
software or data on your own PC or your own company’s
computers, you store it on servers on the internet.
 You don’t care where the servers are located; they’re out
there somewhere—“in the cloud.”