Lesson 1.1: The Practical User: How Becoming Computer Savvy Benefits You Lesson Summary There is no doubt now that information technology is becoming like a second skin for most of us—an extension of our intellects and even emotions, creating almost a parallel universe of “digital selves.” Perhaps you have been using computers for a long time and in a multitude of ways, or maybe not. In either case, this lesson aims to deliver critical practical rewards by helping you become “computer streetwise”—that is, computer savvy. Learning Outcome Explain the importance of this course in relation to your degree program. Motivation Question What does being computer savvy mean, and what are its practical payoffs? Discussion The Digital User: How Becoming Computer Savvy Benefits You Being computer savvy means that you have to understand the capabilities and limitations of computers, its advantages and risks, knowing when you can fix computer problems and when you have to call for help. Among the practical payoffs are these: You will know how to make better buying decisions. No matter how much computer prices come down, you will always have to judge quality and usefulness when buying equipment and software. Computer savvy can help you identify the parts of a computer system, what they do, and how much they cost. You will know how to fix everyday computer problems. Whether it’s replacing a printer cartridge, obtaining a software upgrade, or pulling photos from your digital camera or camera cellphone, being computer savvy will give you the confidence to deal with the continual challenges that arise with computers–and know when and how to call for help. You will know how to customize your computer equipment and integrate it with new products. Different industries are continually developing new gadgetry and software. A knowledgeable user learns how and when to upgrade devices and software, and when to start over by buying a new machine. You will know how to use the internet most effectively. The sea of data on the internet and other online sources is so vast that finding what is best or what is a necessity can be a hugely timeconsuming activity. Being computer savvy will show you the most workable ways to approach this problem. You will know how to protect yourself against online villains. The online world poses real risks to your time, privacy, finances, and peace of mind–spammers, hackers, virus senders, identity thieves, and companies and agencies constructing giant databases of personal profiles. Being computer savvy aims to make you streetwise about these threats. You will know what kinds of computer use can advance your career. Even top executives now use computers, as to people in jobs ranging from police work to politics, from medicine to music, from retail to recreation. Being computer savvy will give you ideas about how technology can benefit you in whatever profession you choose. Lesson 1.2: Information Technology & Your Life: The Future Now Lesson Summary When you merge computer technology with communication, the result is information technology, or “infotech”. Information technology is already affecting lives in exciting ways and will do so even more in the future. This lesson considers how infotech is affecting different sectors in society. Learning Outcome Understand how information technology is affecting the society. Motivation Question What is information technology, and how does it affect education, health, money, leisure, government, and careers? Discussion Information technology (IT) is a popular term that portrays any technology that helps produce, manipulate, store, communicate, and disseminate information. IT fuses computing with highspeed communications links that relay data, sound, and video. Examples of information technology are personal computers but also new forms of electronic appliances and various handheld devices. Education: A More Interactive and Individualized Learning No one will argue that information technology is universal on college campuses, and at lower levels, the internet has penetrated 99% of schools. Most college students are already exposed to computers since their lower grades. One-fifth of college students are saying they were using computers between ages 5 and 8, and all had started using computers by the time they were 1618 years old. When assimilated into the curriculum and classroom, information technology can allow students to personalize their education. It can also automate many tedious and usual tasks of teaching and managing classes and reduce the teacher’s workload so that he or she can focus on reaching individual students. Besides using the internet to teach, today’s college instructors also use presentation applications such as PowerPoint to convey their lecture outlines and other materials on classroom screens. One of the most exciting progress in education at all levels is the proliferation of distance learning, or e-learning, the term given to online education programs, which has gone from under 2 million online students in 2003 to an expected nearly 5 million students in 2009. Bringing career and technical courses to students in rural areas, pairing gifted science students with master teachers, and helping busy professionals obtain further credentials outside business hours are some of the applications of e-learning. But the influence of information technology into education has just started. Health: High Tech for Wellness Computer technology is fundamentally changing the tools of medicine. All medical data, including those generated by a lab test, pulse monitor, and X rays, can now be conveyed to a doctor in digital format. Image transfer technology relays radiologic images such as CT scans and MRIs to electronic charts and physicians' offices immediately. Intensive care patients, who are usually observed by nurses during off-times, can also be monitored by doctors in remote "control towers" far away. Electronic medical records and other computerized tools capacitate heart attack patients to receive follow-up drug treatment and people with diabetes from having their blood sugar levels measured. The software can compute a woman's breast cancer risk. Patients can use email to ask their doctors about their records (although there are still privacy and security issues). Various robots, automatic devices that execute functions ordinarily performed by humans, with names such as HelpMate, ROBO DOC, RoboCart, and TUG, help free medical workers for more critical tasks. The four-armed da Vinci surgical robot, for instance, can do cuts and sutures deep inside the body to have less traumatic surgery and faster recovery time. Artificial limbs get "smarter" by using hydraulics and computers. A stroke-paralyzed patient has obtained an implant that allows communication between a computer and his brain; as a result, he can navigate a cursor across a screen using brainpower and convey simple messages. Patients are often already steeped in information about their conditions when they arrive in health care professionals' offices. It represents a fundamental shift of knowledge, and therefore power, from physicians to patients. Also, health care consumers can now share experiences and information. Money: Toward the Cashless Society Besides currency, credit and debit cards, and paper checks, the things that substitute as “money” include automatic transfers (such as direct-deposit paychecks), cash-value cards (such as subway fare cards), and digital money (“electronic wallet” accounts such as PayPal). You probably already have engaged in online buying and selling, purchasing airline tickets, or computers. But what about groceries? E-grocers keep their delivery charges at a minimum and delivery times convenient. They take great efforts in filling orders, knowing that a single bad piece of fruit will produce a devastating word-of-mouth backlash. Online bill paying is also becoming mainstream. Paying bills online has also been possible, such as phone and utility companies, with special software and online connections to your bank. Some banks and other businesses are deploying an electronic payment system that allows internet users to buy goods and services with micropayments—electronic payments as little as 25 cents in transactions for which it is wasteful to use a credit card. All kinds of businesses and organizations now accept micropayments. Leisure: Infotech in Entertainment & the Arts Information technology is being utilized in all kinds of entertainment, ranging from videogames to telegambling. The arts have also applied it, from painting to photography. Let us ponder on just two applications: music and film. The World Wide Web, the internet, and computers control the system of music recording and distribution—and in the process, they are altering the financial underpinnings of the music industry. Since the industry has a high overhead, major record labels typically require a band to sell half a million CDs to be categorized as profitable. Still, independent groups can be reasonably successful by selling 20,000 or 30,000 albums using online marketing. As for movies, now that blockbuster films routinely incorporate live-action and animation, computer graphic artists are in demand. Star Wars: Episode I (1999), for example, had 1,965 digital shots out of about 2,200 shots. It was converted into digital data to be tweaked with animated effects, lighting, and the like. Entire beings were produced on computers by artists working on designs developed by producer George Lucas and his chief artist. But animation is not the only domain in which computers are transforming movies. Digital editing has revolutionized the way films are assembled. Whereas traditional film editing involved reeling, unreeling, cutting, and gluing spools of film, an editor can access 150 miles of film stored on a computer today. An instant finding of any visual or audio moment allows a review of hundreds of variations of a scene. Even nonprofessionals can get into movie making as new computer-related products come to market. Now that digital video capture-and-edit systems are available for under $1,000, amateurs can turn home videos into digital data and edit them. Also, digital camcorders, which offer outstanding picture and sound quality, have steadily dropped in price. Government: Participating in Electronic Democracy The internet and other information technology have helped the government deliver better services and paved the way for making governmental operations more transparent. Many local and state governments have websites through which citizens can deal with everything from paying taxes and parking tickets, renewing vehicle registration and driver’s licenses, viewing birth and marriage certificates, and applying for public sector jobs. The internet is also changing the nature of politics, enabling political candidates and political interest groups to connect with voters in new ways, raise money from multiple small donors, and (using cellphones and text messaging) to organize street protests. Jobs & Careers Today almost every job and profession need computer skills of some sort. Some are ordinary jobs in which using computers as regular tools. Others are professional jobs in which advanced computer training combined with professional training gives people dramatically new kinds of careers. Information technology is revolutionizing old jobs and creating new ones. To thrive in this environment, you need to integrate traditional education with training in computers and communications. It would be excellent if you also were savvy about job searching, résumé writing, interviewing, and postings of employment opportunities. Finding employers and employers finding you is possible through the use of computers. As you might expect, the first to utilize cyberspace as a job market were companies scouting people with technical backgrounds and professionals seeking employment. However, as the public’s regard in commercial services and the internet has exploded, the focus of online job exchanges has broadened. Most websites are free to job hunters, although many require that you fill out an online registration form. On the other hand, posting your résumé online for prospective employers to view is attractive because of its low (or zero) cost and broad reach. But does it have any disadvantages? Indeed, it might if the employer who sees your posting happens to be the one you are already employed. Also, you have to be aware that you lose control over anything broadcast into cyberspace. You are putting your credentials out there for the whole world to see, and you need to be somewhat concerned about who might gain access to them. Lesson 1.3: The Categories of Machines and Other IT Infrastructures or Gadgets Lesson Summary At one time, owning a personal computer was almost like having a nuclear reactor. In those days, in the 1950s and 1960s, computers were enormous machines affordable only by large institutions. Today, they exist in various shapes and sizes, which classify according to their processing power: supercomputers, mainframe computers, workstations, microcomputers, and microcontrollers. We also consider servers. Learning Outcomes 1. Enumerate different IT gadgets/infrastructures 2. Describe the use of various electronic technologies Motivation Question What are the five sizes of computers, and what are some of the different IT gadgets/infrastructures? Discussion Figure 1. The five sizes of computers Supercomputers Supercomputers are high-capacity computers with thousands of processors that can execute more than several trillion calculations per second. These are the most costly and quickest computers available. Computing professionals use supercomputers for tasks requiring the processing of enormous volumes of data, such as doing census count, forecasting the weather, designing aircraft, modeling molecules, and breaking encryption codes. Lately, they have been employed for business purposes—for instance, sifting demographic marketing information—and creating film animation. Supercomputers are still the most robust computers, but a new generation may be coming that relies on nanotechnology, using molecule-size nanostructures to create tiny machines for holding data or performing tasks. Computers the size of a bottle cap could become available that works ten times faster than today’s fasters supercomputer. Eventually, nanotech could show up in every device and appliance in your life. Figure 2. NASA researchers and university partners use supercomputers to better understand the coronavirus and how it spreads. (image source: NAS Supercomputing | Twitter) Mainframe Computers The only type of computing machine available until the late 1960s, mainframes are water- or aircooled computers that differ in size from small, to medium, to large, depending on their use. Small mainframes, also called midsize computers; they used to be called minicomputers, although today it is a seldom-used term. Mainframes are used by large organizations—such as banks, airlines, insurance companies, and colleges—for processing millions of transactions. Often users access a mainframe through a terminal, which has a display screen and a keyboard and can input and output data but cannot process data by itself. Mainframes process billions of instructions per second. Figure 3. A mainframe computer (image source: What Are Some Examples of Mainframe Computers? | Reference.com) Workstations Workstations, introduced in the early 1980s, are costly, powerful personal computers usually used for complex scientific, mathematical, and engineering calculations and computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing. Workstations, providing many capabilities comparable to those of midsize mainframes, are used for such tasks as designing airplane fuselages, developing prescription drugs, and creating movie special effects. Workstations have caught the public's eye mainly for their graphics capabilities, which breathe three-dimensional life into movies. The features of low-end workstations overlap those of high-end desktop microcomputers. Figure 4. A workstation computer (image source: Daniel Byrne on Pinterest) Microcomputers Microcomputers, also called personal computers (PCs), can fit next to a desk or on a desktop or be carried around. They either are stand-alone machines or are linked to a computer network, e.g., a local area network. A local area network (LAN) connects several desktop PCs and other devices, such as printers, offices, or buildings. Microcomputers are of several types: desktop PCs, notebooks (laptops), netbooks, tablets, and smartphones. Desktop PCs (Figure 5, right) are older microcomputers whose case or main housing sits on a desk, with a keyboard in front and monitor (screen) often on top. Notebook computers (Figure 5, left), also called laptop computers, are lightweight, portable computers with a built-in monitor, keyboard, hard-disk drive, CD/DVD drive, battery, and AC adapter plugged into an electrical outlet. These are similar to desktop PCs except that they comprise an integrated unit. Because of the costly components and the smaller market for laptops, these are usually quite a bit more expensive than personal computers. Netbooks are low-cost, lightweight, computers with tiny dimensions and functions designed for basic tasks, such as web searching, email, and word processing. They have little processing power and fill a technological category between notebooks and handheld devices. Figure 5. Laptops (left) are more portable devices than desktops (right) (image source: MacBook laptop vs Mac desktop: Buying guide Macworld UK) A tablet is a mobile gadget, typically with a mobile operating system, a rechargeable battery in a single thin package, and a touchscreen display processing circuitry. Tablets resemble smartphones in some ways and can also be used to take photos, make phone calls, send messages, record videos, and perform tasks that can also be performed by a smartphone. Smartphones, on the other hand, is a mobile phone with highly advanced features— a high-resolution touchscreen display, Wi-Fi connectivity, among others. It is a cellular phone with an integrated computer and other elements not originally associated with telephones, like an operating system, web browsing capability, and the ability to run software applications. Figure 6. A tablet is bigger than a smartphone in terms of size. (image source: iMore) Microcontrollers Microcontrollers, also called embedded computers, are the minute, specialized microprocessors installed in “smart” appliances and automobiles. These microcontrollers enable microwave ovens, for example, to store data about how long to cook your potatoes and at what power setting. Developing a new universe of experimental electronic appliances uses microcontrollers. For example, they are behind single-function products such as digital cameras, MP3, and MP4 players, which develop into hybrid forms such as gadgets that store photos, videos, and music. They also help run tiny web servers embedded in clothing, jewelry, and household appliances such as refrigerators. Also, blood-pressure monitors, airbag sensors, gas and chemical sensors for water and air, and vibrations sensors use microcontrollers. Figure 7. A microcontroller (image source: Whitehat - Posts | Facebook) Other IT Infrastructures or Gadgets A network server is a central computer that stores the collections of data (databases) and programs for connecting or supplying services to PCs, workstations, and other devices, which are called clients. A wired or wireless network links these clients. The entire system is called a client/server network. In small organizations, servers can store files, provide printing stations, and transmit emails. In large organizations, servers may also house enormous libraries of financial, sales, and product information. A computer peripheral is any detachable device that provides input and output for the computer machine. Computer peripherals, or peripheral devices, are often called “I/O devices” because they supply input and output. Some peripherals, like external hard drives, provide both input and output for the computer. A hard disk drive, also abbreviated to HDD, is an electronic data memory device that uses magnetic storage to keep and retrieve digital information using one or more rigid, rapidly rotating disks coated with magnetic material. The platters paired with magnetic heads usually arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is read in a random-access manner, indicating that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved. A hard drive saves all your digital content. Your documents, pictures, music, videos, programs, application preferences, and operating systems represent digital content stored on a hard drive. Hard drives can be external or internal. Figure 8. Some examples of peripheral devices (image source: Design Elements - Computer Peripheral Devices | ConceptDraw on Pinterest) A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently, typically using flash memory. Sometimes called a solidstate device or a solid-state disk, although SSDs lack the physical spinning disks and movable read-write heads used by HDDs. In its purest form, an SSD is a flash memory and has no moving parts. SSD storage is much faster than its HDD equivalent. Flash drives are solid-state devices that connect to the computer via the USB port. It provides a quick and reliable method of storing data externally. It is typically removable, rewritable, and much smaller than an optical disc. An automatic voltage regulator (AVR) is a hardware device used to maintain a constant voltage and power line conditioning to the equipment load under a wide variety of conditions, even when the utility input voltage, frequency, or system load vary widely. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is a device that supplies battery backup when the electrical power fails to an unacceptable voltage level. Small UPS devices provide power for a few minutes, sufficient to power down the computer in an orderly manner, while larger systems have an adequate battery for several hours.
