2. CURRENT TRENDS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
• The performance of integrated circuits and cost
reductions brought about by rapid miniaturization have
driven much of the advances in IT.
• Semi conductor Technology: A related trend is the
migration of computing into other devices and
equipment.
• semiconductor chips become more powerful and less
expensive, they are becoming increasingly everywhere.
• new capabilities are being added to chips. These include
microelectro mechanical systems (MEMs), such as
sensors and actuators, and digital signal processors that
enable cost reductions and extend IT into new types of
devices.
• Examples of MEM devices include ink–jet printer
cartridges, hard disk drive heads, accelerometers that
deploy car airbags, and chemical and environmental
sensors.
3. Information Storage
• Disk drives and other forms of information
storage reflect similar improvements in cost and
performance. As a consequence, the amount of
information in digital form has expanded
greatly.
• Computers, reflecting the improvements in their
components, have shown similar dramatic
improvements in performance.
4. Networking
• The third trend is the growth of networks. Computers are
increasingly connected in networks, including local area
networks and wide area networks.
• Increasingly organizations are using open–standard
Internet– based systems for networks.
• As people have been able to interconnect and share
information with each other, the value of IT has increased.
• The growth in networking is best illustrated by the rapid
growth of the Internet.
• Worldwide, there were nearly 100 million Internet hosts—
computers connected to the Internet.
• according to reports in July 2000, up from about 30 million
at the beginning of 1998.
• Networking is evolving in several ways: more people and
devices are becoming connected to the network,
• the speed and capacity of connections are increasing,
• and more people are obtaining wireless connections.
5. APPLICATIONS OF IT
• Computers were originally usedprimarily for dataprocessing.
• As they became more powerful and convenient, applications expanded.
• Word processing, spreadsheets, and database programs were among the
early minicomputer and PC applications.
• Over the past two decades, innovations in software have enabled
applications to expand to include
• educational software,
• desktop publishing,
• computer–aided design and
• manufacturing, games,
• modeling and simulation,
• networking and communications
• software, electronic mail,
• the World Wide Web,
• digital imaging and photography,
• audio and video applications,
• electronic commerce applications,
• groupware, file sharing, search engines, and many others.
6. • IT has become common in schools, libraries, homes, offices, and
businesses.
• For example, corner grocery stores use IT for a variety of electronic
transactions such as
• debit and credit payments, and automobile repair shops use IT to
diagnose problems and search for parts from dealers.
• IT Applications in Business
• Some IT applications automate a variety of basic business activities,from
production control systems in manufacturing to word processing and
financial calculations in office work.
• Other applications involve databases and information retrieval that
support management, customer service, logistics, product design,
marketing and competitive analysis.
• Through IT, companies can combine computing and communications to
facilitate ordering and product tracking. IT functions often are
implemented as mechanizations of older, manual processes; ideally,
however, they involve fundamental redesign of processes.
• The use of IT by business began with and in many instances continues to
rely on mainframe computers, minicomputers, and microcomputers, as
well as telephone networks
• including the public switched network and leased–line private networks.
•
7. • . The spread of Internet technology and the
proliferation of portable computing and
communications devices have accelerated trends that
began in the past two decades and now are viewed as
“electronic commerce” or e–commerce.
• Companies now use the World Wide Web to
communicate with the general public and also use
similar but more secure intra nets and extra nets to
communicate with employees, suppliers, and
distribution partners.
• With the growth of e– commerce, the focus has shifted
to how businesses are using IT to communicate with
customers and suppliers and develop new distribution
chains and new methods of marketing and selling.
8. • IT also is commonly credited as being a key
factor in the economy’s structural shift from
manufacturing to services. The widespread
diffusion of IT is largely responsible for the
growth in existing services (such as banking)
and the creation of new service industries
(such as software engineering) In addition to
its role in changing the structure of the
economy, IT affects productivity and
economic growth overall.
9. IT Effects on Income and Work
• IT both creates and eliminates jobs.
• As jobs are created or eliminated, labor
markets adjust in complex ways.
• Wages go up in areas(occupations or
locales)in which the demand for skills exceeds
the supply and go down in areas in which
there are more jobs than workers. Over time,
the effects of IT are likely to appear not in
unemployment figures but in the wages of
different occupations.
•
10. IT and R and D
• IT has provided new tools for the simulation and
modeling of complex natural, social, and engineering
systems.
• It has enabled new methods of data collection and
creation of massive, complex, and shared data sets.
• It has changed the way scientific knowledge is stored
and communicated.
• IT has facilitated the sharing of computational
resources and scientific instruments among scientists
and engineers in different locations and has aided
communication and collaboration among large groups
of researchers.
• The role of IT is not uniform across all areas of S&E.
Some areas of research, such as high–energy physics,
fluid dynamics, aeronautical engineering, and
atmospheric sciences, have long relied on high– end
computing.
11. Modeling and Simulation
• Simulations allow researchers to run virtual
experiments when actual experiments would be
impractical or impossible.
• As computer power grows, simulations can be
made more complex, and new classes of
problems can be realistically simulated.
• Simulation is contributing to major advances in
weather and climate prediction, computational
biology, plasma science, high–energy
physics,cosmology,materials research,and
combustion,among other are as New
visualization techniques for displaying simulation
data in comprehensible formats have played an
important role.
