Module 1

Information Technology Fundamentals

 Objectives

1. To learn the evolution of Information Technology.

2. To learn what information technology is
3. To identify the issues concerning the rise of information
technology.
4. To distinguished the opportunities of information
technology.
5. To identify the different components of a computer system
6. To understand how the computer system works with one
another.
7. To understand the benefits of Information Technology to
mankind.
 Lecture Outline
 An Introduction to Information Technology
◦ The Evolution of the Information Age
◦ The Principles and career side of I.T.
 I.T. Issues and Opportunities
◦ Privacy and Ethics
◦ Intellectual Property Law
◦ Computer Crimes and Threats
 Computer System
◦ Hardware
◦ Software
◦ Data
◦ Peopleware
◦ Communication/Networking
 The Internet
MAIN
Click the desired topic
Information Technology
The use of
 Hardware
 Software
 Services
 Supporting infrastructure
To
 Manage
 Deliver
 Convey

information in the form of VOICE, DATA and VIDEO

Other Definition

 The study, design, development, implementation, support

or management of computer-based information systems,
particularly software applications and computer hardware
- Information Technology Association of America
 Age of Information Technology

Four basic periods

• Pre-mechanical / Agricultural Age (3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D.)

• Mechanical (1450 – 1840)
• Electromechanical / Industrial Age (1840 – 1940)
• Electronic / Information Age (1940 – Present)
Pre-mechanical/Agricultural Characteristics

•Writing and alphabets(pictures, • Concerned in producing

drawings, cuneiform, Phoenicians, basic necessities such as
Greek words, Latin words) food and shelter
•Paper and pens • Used bare hands
•Leaves, Stones, scrolls, Books
Mechanical CHARATERISTIC
•Slide Rules
William Oughtred • Inclusion of machines
•Pascaline in daily activities
Blaise Pascal
•Analytical and Difference Engine
Charles Babbage
•Jacquard’s Loom
Joseph Marie Jacquard
Punch card idea picked up by
Babbage
•Augusta Ada Byron
the first programmer
 Electromechanical CHARACTERISTIC

• Voltaic Battery •Paper tape stored data and

late 18th century program instructions.

• Telegraph •The discovery of ways to

Early 1800s. harness electricity was the key
advance.
• Morse Code
1835 by Samuel Morse •Knowledge and information
could now be converted into
• Telephone and Radio electrical impulses.
1876 by Alexander Graham
Bell
 Electronic/Information Age CHARATERISTICS
(Some of the FIRST COMPUTERS) Four generations:

ENIAC - High-Speed, General- The First Generation (1951-1958)

Purpose • Vacuum Tubes
By J. Presper Eckert, Jr The Second Generation (1959-
and John W. Mauchly. 1963)
• Transistors
Manchester Mark I - First Stored- The Third Generation (1964-1979)
Program • Integrated circuits
June 1948 Fourth Generation (1979- Present)
by Max Newman • Large-scale and very large-scale
integrated circuits
UNIVAC- General-Purpose for
Commercial Use –
Late 1940s,
by Eckert and Mauchly
Information Technology doesn't eliminate old activities,
it only enhances them.
 Career Side of Information Technology

Lecture
OUTLINE
I.T. Issues and Opportunities

“Technology, for all the wondrous things about it, can

also be a major distraction and a drain on your time if
you focus on the technology itself rather than on the
benefits it can bring to your business.”
- The Truth About Technology
by Jay Conrad Levinson

“The technology eases the labor and takes away some of

the pain, but it doesn’t relieve the duty."
- Net Benefits
by : Kim Elton
Promises of Information Age
 Emerging Global Telecommunications
 Artificial Intelligence
 Information & Education
 Health, Medicine, & Science
 Commerce & Money
 Entertainment & the Arts
 Government & Electronic Democracy
 Jobs & Careers
 Ethics
• Applying professional standard of good practices within their
profession.

• Computer ethics
- Study of ethical problems “aggravated, transformed or
created by computer technology”
– Walter Maner
Application of Ethics:

Computers in the Workplace

Computer Crime

Privacy and Anonymity

Intellectual Property

Professional Responsibility
Globalization
Ethical Issues In Information Technology

Privacy
Information protection
Accuracy
Correctness of information
Responsibilities
Property
User of Information

Accessibility
Reliability of Information
Privacy

• Protecting individual or group’s information under

different conditions

• Keeping information to themselves and not be

forced to reveal to others
Threats to Privacy

• Information technology growth

 Surveillance, communication, computation,
storage, and retrieval.

• Value of information
 Competition
Intellectual Property Law
Established to protect creations / inventions of the
human mind.
Literary and artistic works
Product names, slogans, logos and
packaging;
Symbols, names, images and designs used
in commerce;
Trade secrets
Computer Crimes/Intrusion
- Illegal activities conducted via computer

“There are so many ways perpetrators can victimize people. They

are clever, too.”
- Richard Hamp,
Utah Assistant Attorney General

http://www.research.olemiss.edu/UMQuest/2007/Winter/WeaponsOfChoice.html
Cybercrimes

• System penetration
• Sabotage
• Abuse of Internet Usage
• Financial Fraud
• Theft of Information
• Denial of Service
• Unauthorized Access
• Viruses
 Report from the cooperating Units:
National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law
National Association of Attorneys General
University of Mississippi
 * in 2005
Half are between the ages of 30 and 50
http://www.research.olemiss.edu/UMQuest/2007/Winter/WeaponsOfChoice.html
 Report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group
Lecture
Outline http://news.cnet.com/security/?keyword=SQL+injection
Computer

A programmable multi-use electronic machine that

• Performs high-speed mathematical or logical operations

• Accepts data
• manipulates into useful information.
Basic Functions

• Input
• Processing

• Output
• Storing
Input Devices

• Send data and instruction

• Means to communicate with the computer

Input Devices
Output Devices

• Make processed data available to the user

Output Devices
Processing

• Executes computer instructions

• Done by the Central Processing Unit

The parts of CPU

Storing

• Saving information for future use

• Temporary and Permanent
• Magnetic Tape, floppy disk, Hard disk,
Optical Disks, Smart Cards

Permanent Storage Devices

Computer System

• Interacting or interdependent entities

• Forming an integrated whole with the use of computer.

 Hardware
 Software
 Data
 People
 Communication
 Hardware
• Tangible objects that can be touch
• Disks, disk drives, display screens, keyboards, printers,
boards, and chips.

Basic Parts of
Computer

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Parts-of-a-computer
Software

• Refers to digitally stored data

• Computer programs
• Other kinds of information read and written by
computers.
Categories of Software:

Systems software
 Operate the computer hardware
 Provide and maintain a platform
 Two kinds of Systems Software

Operating system
Utilities software
Applications software
 Perform singular or multiple specific tasks

Word processors, Spreadsheets,

Database management systems, Photo Editor
Data
• Unprocessed collection of numbers, characters, images

Information
• Converted data after applying process
People

• User of Information technology

• Who designs, develops, or uses computer systems
•Individual computer users, or groups of people
Computer engineers
Programmers
Database Administrator
Computer Support Specialist
Network Administrator
 2 Types of Information Technology User
Direct – Actual User of the Application
e.g. Users of Point-Of-Sale System in a store
Indirect – Gain benefits from the Application
e.g. Customers
Communication/Networking
• Linked computing devices
• To share data.
Purpose:
Helps to expand human communication beyond face-to-
face meetings
Benefits:
 File sharing
 Printer / peripheral sharing
 Internet connection sharing
 Multi-player games
 Internet telephone service
 Home entertainment
 Network Categories:
According to:

• Size
Designs is by their scope or scale
Local and Wide Area
• Design
Designs is by their purpose
Client-Server and Peer-to-peer
• Structure
Designs is by the view of data flow.
Star, Mesh, and Ring
Lecture
Outline
Local Area Network

 In close proximity.
 In a building, school and offices.
 Sharing resources like files, printers, games or other
applications.
Wide Area Network
 Collection of LANs.
 Router connects LAN to a WAN.
 Notowned by any one organization
 ATM and Frame Relay Technologies

 Internet is the largest WAN

Network
Categories
Client-server
Shows the relationship between two computer programs
• The client, makes a service request
• The server, which fulfills the request
E.g.,
To check your bank account from your computer
 Peer-to-peer
 Direct access from one another's hard drives
 Communication node have both server and client capabilities
 Run the same networking protocols and software.

Network
Categories
Bus
 Connected in a single segment trunk
 It uses a multi-drop transmission medium
 Messages travel from one end of the bus to another
Star
• Central server to route data between clients
• Data flow between the server and the nodes
• Mainframe computers.
Ring
 A circle of point-to-point connections
 Signal is transferred sequentially via a "token”
 Each handles its own applications
 Shares resources over the entire network
 No central server

Network
Categories
Internet

 The largest computer network

 Connect millions of computers
Milestones of Internet
1962 - Advanced Research Agency (ARPA) of
the U.S. Department of Defense

1972 - Steve
Wozniak’s Blue Box

1963
1963 –– SYNCOM
SYNCOM
the
the first
first synchronous
synchronous
communication
communication satellite
satellite
 1992 - MOSAIC,
the predecessor of Netscape

Tim Berners-Lee
1989 - HTML

1994- Netscape Navigator

http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/internet_history_90s.html
 Internet Browsers
Web browsers: five alternatives to Internet Explorer

Mozilla Firefox SAFARI OPERA

CHROME FLOCK
By Claudine Beaumont
Published: 1:39PM GMT 16 Dec 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3794213/Web-browsers-five-alternatives-to-Internet-Explorer.html
Functions of Internet

• Newsgroups
• FTP
• Telnet
• E-mail
• Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
• Social Networking
• Research
Exercise

 Go and form GROUPS with 3 members.

 Your task is to identify a COMPUTER SYSTEM setup if you
will be given chance to present a proposal.
 Draw the Network Diagram of your proposal.
1. Clearly state your goal and Objectives
a. WHAT (What is your PROPOSAL)
b. WHY (Reason why your are proposing such)
c. WHEN (Time and date the proposal will be
implemented)

2. Identify the different components the COMPUTER

SYSTEM
a. SOFWARE
b. HARDWARE
c. DATA
d. PEOPLE
e. COMMUNICATION / NETWORK
Lecture
Outline MAIN
References:
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/AZ/ITHistoryOutline.htm

http://jobsearchtech.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=jobsearcht
ech&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pbs.org%2Fnerds%2F

http://jobsearchtech.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=jobsearcht
ech&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pbs.org%2Fnerds%2F

http://jobsearchtech.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=jobsearcht
ech&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pbs.org%2Fnerds%2F

http://oreilly.com/catalog/crime/chapter/cri_02.html

http://legalcareers.about.com/od/legalpracticeareas/a/Intellectualproperty.htm

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-computer/

http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci211796,00.html

http://fcit.usf.edu/network