LIVING IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
Close your eyes and imagine the office of the future. It is comfortable and paperless. It is equipped with a desk, a chair, a phone and a fax... so where is the news? It is in the fact that you can enjoy the efficiency and effectiveness of new information appliances which will allow you to embrace the world in an instant. Personal computers, voice mails and e-mails, videoconferences, DMMs (Document Management Systems), the World Wide Web and private intranets are turning your office into a fabulous cyber-space. And you? You feel strange, you do not believe your eyes, don't you like this new virtual dimension? Well, you're right. You need time to get accostumed to computerese. You are a neophyt, a non specialised, that is why computer language sounds so unnatural and mysterious to you. Do not worry.. Here are some tips that will better your relationship with it:
First of all, remember that computerese is mainly based on American English. Thus you will find program rather than programme, disk rather than disc, recognize rather than recognise and so on. Secondly, conversion is quite frequent, therefore nouns can easily become verbs (e.g. input, format, fax, etc). Thirdly, acronyms are everywhere, (e.g. ROM, RAM, CPU, FAQ, etc.) Now, before using a computer or surfing on the Net, bear in mind who you have to do with. A computer is a machine which transforms a sequence of symbols into another sequence of symbols thanks to a series of instructions it receives from a programmer. The only symbols a computer knows are 1 and 0 and all sequences are built according to a particular grammar based on Boolean algebra, which tries to reproduce the mechanism of abstract reasoning. The three fundamental logic operations of Boolean algebra are: and, or and not. Software is the name given to computer programs. There are two types of software:
THE INTERNET
The birth of the Internet goes back to to the 60s when Paul Baran was commissioned by the US Airforce to device a system which allowed the American Defense Department to maintain the control over its missiles and bombers in case of a nuclear attack. A decentralised military network was realised as a result for the exchange of data and information. From the 60s to the 90s the Internet was primarily used by the Defense Department, by industry and university researchers to connect remote computers and to send e-mail messages. In the mid-90s there were three decisive developments that marked the beginning of a new era:
Today, everyone can enjoy the advantages of the Internet. All you need is a computer, a normal telephone line, a modem, and an account with an Internet Service Provider, in other words, a company that provides access to the Internet. Powerful search engines will enable you to find the information you are looking for. The engines periodically launch special programs called web crawlers, which collect and classify information from all reachable sites. These data are recorded in the engine's database with an address called URL (Uniform Resource Locator).