Information and Technology

Topic 1: Data and Information

This is the first topic that I studied under Information and Technology course. I learnt so many things under this heading, so useful to me to carryon my studies. Whatever the work, the start should be a great one. Then only we can continue its flow. Same like that we had a good start with this topic Data and Information. In my first class of Information Technology our lecturer Mrs Khairunnisa and taught us valuable things, discussed about Computer and Internet course, and also gave us a good introduction about Information Technology.

First of all we studied about what is a computer and what are the basic operations of a computer? A computer is a machine which is working or running according to the command or instruction given by the system and user. Input, output, processing, storage, and communication are the basic operations that we learnt about.

Then we studied about Evolution of Computers. It’s all about the history of computers and generations of computers. Under this heading I learnt so many useful things about the History of computers. Moreover I learnt about how the Computer Technology changed generation by generation from the beginning of first generation in 1940 with vacuum tube. There are five generations for this computer and its technology.

First Generation (1940 - 1950).

Mostly the vacuum tubes has been used to build computers in this first generation. The 1^st Electronic Computer called ENIAC was built in this generation in 1945. Around 18000 vacuum tubes were used by the inventors of ENIAC and it was programmed by manually setting switches. The inventors are J. Presper Eckert and John Mouchly. They build this computer for US Army to calculate and design Hydrogen Bombs during World War II.

The first commercial computer also built in this first generation in 1951 called UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer).

                         

Second Generation (1950 - 1964).

Vacuum tubes were replaced by Transistors. William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain were the inventors of this newly introduced Transistors in second generation computers. Second generations most computers were IBM 1401. High level languages like COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) and FORTRAN (Formula Translator) have been used in this generations computers.

                       

Third Generation (1964 - 1974)

Integrated Circuits were introduced by replacing the Transistors in this generation. Integrated circuits are microchips. It combines thousands of transistors and entire circuit on one computer chip. Users started to use OS, keyboard and mouse in this third generation. I think this is the generation that started to think differently on computers and computer technology to become to the place which is now we are seeing.

Fourth Generation (1974 - Present)

Fourth generation is the generation which gave the birth to Modern Computers. As fourth generation computers are the Modern Computers. Two kind of integrated circuits were used by the computer specialists in this generations computers. That are VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) and ULSI (Ultra Large Scale Integration). This integrations were helped to to fit millions of components into a small chip.

Fifth Generation (Now and the Future)

This generation is all about Artificial Intelligence. It means the computers can think, it can give reasons to incidents, and also it can learn like human. Primary means of input are voice and touch only. This kind of computers will make a revolution in IT world for sure. It going to change the way that this world travelling now.

Not only this, I learnt about the categories of computers. So interesting and amazing when I saw the categories. I was thinking that there few kind of computers are in the world. But now I knew more than that.

Categories of Computers

-Embedded Computers

-Mobile Devices/ Computers

-Personal Computers

-Midrange Servers

-Mainframes

-Super Computers

-Hybrid Computers

Embedded computers are mini computers that has been created for a specific purpose or for a specific work. We can say like that embedded into a specific product for a specific function.

Mobile computers also small computers that can be fit on your hand. It contains built in computing or internet capabilities. It’s easy to use internet while you are walking or working. You don’t have to sit in a place to to use internet like in PC’s.

Personal computers are the computers fully functioning portable or desktop, designed for a personal user or a single user at a time. We can see this kind of computers in every houses nowadays. I think this computers are very friendly with user than other kind of computers.

Midrange servers are very useful to store data and programs. It’s like a small cabinet which contains data and programs available or useful to a small group of users.

Mainframe computers are known as large, expensive, and powerful computers which is handling hundreds or thousands of connected users simultaneously. Physically it seems like big computers.

Supercomputers are the most fast, most powerful, and most expensive computers in the world than any other computers. Mainly this supercomputers are used for complex computation and processing. This kind of computers also physically big computers than any other.

After those categories of computers, I learnt about the definitions about data and information. Before I study this I was confuse about this. Data means raw facts which can be in the forms of numbers, characters, symbols, pictures, and sounds. Information also data which is organized and meaningful. Information is very useful when making decisions. The main thing about data and information is, data is used as input for processing and information is output of this processing. There are several roles of information. Information is used to influence and persuade the users and people, it can be a capital resource especially for companies that produce information based products and services, and most importantly it is used in decision making.

Other than this I learnt about two main basic elements of information. That elements are Reach and Richness. Reach means the number of people who are participating sharing information. Richness means the amount of quality information shared in transaction. It has three main components.

-bandwidth (the amount of information that can be moved from sender to receiver in a given time);

-customization (whether the information is tailored for an audience of a particular size);

-Interactivity between 2 parties.

After this section I learnt about Computer System. This topic also helped me to clear some doubts of mine. In computer system, a computer converts the data which we give as an input to become information which is coming out as output. Here, information processing called IP follows the I-P-O method to process data. I-P-O includes Input, Processing, and Output.

Input can be in programs, commands, and user responses. Input device are any hardware components that allows users to enter data into a computer and output is data that has been well organised and processed into a useful form mainly it can be used in decision making. Output devices are any hardware components which conveys the information to one or more people. To change the data into information processing is very important. CPU is the device which helps to process data into information. This is the main function of a CPU. CPU consist of three main parts. Arithmetic Logical Unit, Control Unit, and Registers.

Then I studied about information management under first topic. Information management means it’s all about managing the information in an effective way. Many people or users have so many problems about information systems. This information management will help them to clear or fix the problem easily. Electronics records management system (RM), Learning management system (LM), and Customer relationship system (CRM) are the examples for Information Management System.