Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.

Text Content or SSML code:

There were very few computers in the 1950s, and those in existence were treated as objects of wonder with almost mythical powers. They were nothing like the computers of today, as you’ll see in a later part. For one thing, they were huge, such as that shown in Figure 1.2 with Grace Hopper, inventor of the computer language COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language). They were also delicate and consumed a lot of electricity, wasting much of it as heat Nowadays, however, a computer is just another item stocked in supermarkets. And as computers have become cheaper and smaller, they have been incorporated into a kaleidoscopic range of devices that bear no resemblance to what was once thought of as a computer. Powerful computers now sit at the heart of objects as diverse as smartphones and games consoles, cars and vacuum cleaners. The cost of computer power continues to decrease, making it possible to incorporate computer technologies into almost any object, no matter how small, cheap or disposable. And these smart devices are ‘talking’ to one another – not just within a single room or building, but across the world via the internet, using the world wide web (see Box 1.1). Thus even as the computer vanishes from sight, it becomes vastly more powerful and ever-present – to use a term you’ll become very familiar with, it is now ubiquitous. In the smartphone, two previous separate technologies, computers and the mobile telephone systems, have become combined in one device. This convergence of computing and telephone technologies has resulted in new goods and services for people to buy and use. For example, many people who were not previously interested in computers are happy to take photographs on their mobile phones and share them. In this situation, the computer in the phone handles the processing of the photograph and enables it to be sent by email or uploaded to social media. The internet and the web You will come across the terms internet and web a lot in TM111. Although in everyday life people tend to use these terms interchangeably, in reality they are two separate (though related) entities. The internet is a global network of networks: an internetwork (hence its name). It is the infrastructure that connects computers together. At first written with an upper-case ‘I’, it is now usually seen with a lower-case ‘i’. The web (short for world wide web), on the other hand, is a service that links files across computers, allowing us to access and share information. Thus the web is a software system that has been built upon the hardware of the internet. Apart from anything else, this means that it is technically incorrect to refer to ‘searching’ or ‘browsing’ the internet. When you carry out an online search, you are in fact searching the web! The networked world Networks and the internet As a result of advances in information and communication technology (ICT), our notions of time and location are changing – distance is no longer a barrier to commercial or social contact for those of us connected to suitable networks. Some people may find it difficult to imagine not having access to the information and services that play a crucial part in their daily lives. Others may feel that they have no part to play in the digital world because their network access is very limited or even non-existent. Some simply don’t care about the digital world, viewing it perhaps as a waste of time. Yet whether we are aware of it or not, digital information is flowing constantly around us. Consider a computer that is connected to the internet – the one you intend to use in studying TM111, for example. This may be a computer you use at home, in a library or at work; you may use it on the move or in a fixed location. Whatever the case, this computer is part of a complex system consisting of wires and optical fibres, microwaves and lasers, switches and satellites, that encompasses almost every part of the world. The oceans are wrapped in more than a quarter of a million miles of fibre-optic network cable with several strands of glass running through it. Each of these strands can carry thousands of simultaneous telephone conversations, a few dozen television channels, or any of a range of other forms of digital content (such as web pages). This modern communications network enables us to use a mobile phone in the depths of Siberia or take a satellite telephone to the Antarctic (Figure 1.3), watch television in the middle of the Atlantic, do our banking on the train, or play games with a person on the other side of the world. It is one of the greatest technological achievements of the last thirty years and it is so reliable, so omnipresent, that we very rarely stop to think about what actually happens when we dial a telephone number, click on a web link or switch TV channels. Or, rather, we tend not to think about it until something disrupts the network – whether it be a widespread problem such as a power cut, or something more localised such as finding ourselves in a rural area with slow broadband access or no mobile phone signal. Information, knowledge and learning The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century are often compared to other historical periods of great change, such as the Industrial Revolution, because of the huge technological changes that are happening in many areas of our lives. These developments are taking place in conjunction with correspondingly large social and economic changes, often characterised by the terms information society and network society. Policy makers frequently refer to such terms when driving forward changes in the technological infrastructure. Politicians often refer to the inevitability of technological change in our information society and stress the need to be at the forefront of these changes in order to secure future prosperity. The development of the broadband network infrastructure, making public services available online, and equipping schools and local communities with computers are examples of such changes. Another term you might have encountered is that of the knowledge society, which refers to the way that new information systems can transform human societies. Included in the knowledge society is the idea of the ‘learning society’. The pace of change is so rapid nowadays that learning can no longer be confined to our school years and early adulthood. Everyone must continue to learn throughout their adult lives in order to benefit from the economic opportunities that rapid development makes possible. The rise of texting and messaging You might wonder about how these technologies change the way we live, work and relax, but sometimes it works the other way around. Unintended uses sometimes develop alongside the intended uses of emerging technologies in our information society. A classic example is the text-messaging facility on mobile phones, often referred to as SMS (which stands for short message service). This was originally a minor feature designed to be used by engineers testing equipment – it was not expected to be used by phone owners at all. Yet in the first decade of the twenty-first century, SMS messages were one of the most profitable parts of the mobile phone business (International Telecommunication Union, 2006). SMS resulted in a whole new method of communication and form of popular culture, different ways of interacting with radio and television, and even a new language form: texting. Income from SMS messages peaked at around US$104 billion in 2011 (Associated Press, 2012). In more recent times, instant messaging (IM) ‘apps’ used on smartphones, such as WhatsApp, Snapchat and Telegram, have overtaken SMS in popularity. By 2015, the IM company WhatsApp was handling 30 billion messages every day, compared to the 20 billion SMS messages sent daily (Evans, 2015). This difference in usage is partly because there is no extra cost involved in using IM services. SMS messages can be expensive on some contracts and require a mobile phone signal, but they are still in use. Multimedia messaging services (MMS) allow for text, audio and images to be sent via the mobile phone signal. The total number of SMS and MMS messages sent in the first three months of 2016 was 24.1 billion, a decrease of 1.8 billion messages (6.8%) compared to a year previously (Ofcom, 2016). These services and applications are blurring the boundaries between texting and online communication. Note: ‘billion’ is a word that in the past had different meanings in the UK and the USA. However, the two countries now agree that a billion is one thousand million (1000 000 000), and TM111 will follow that convention.