COMP427

The Impact of Information Technology

Appreciating the Benefits

• Internet• Education and Training• Crime Fighting• Health and Medicine• Automation• Environmental Protection• And more ….

Internet

• E-Mail and the World Wide Web are probably the two computer applications most widely used by both technical and non-technical people

• E-mail has many advantages of phone calls• World Wide Web make the collection, searching,

analysis, storage, access, and distribution of large amounts of information much easier, cheaper, and faster than before

Internet (cont’d)

• The web is so widely and commonly used now that we sometimes forget how new and extraordinary it is. Established in Europe in 1990 to enable high-energy physicists to share pictures and text with colleagues in other countries

• As the Web became a tool for electronic commerce and ordinary users, it grew at an astonishing rate. In 1998, there were 320 million Web pages. By 2001, there were 3 billion

Internet (cont’d)

• Personal Computers (and especially the Web) increase the independence and options available to people. These tools make it possible, or much easier than before, for ordinary people to make better decisions about everything from movies to medical treatments and to do things which we used to reply on experts to do for us

• Web browsers make it so easy to download and print documents that relatively recent previous innovations quickly became out-of-date.

Internet (cont’d)

• The Web help us not only to find material of interest to us, but also to make available to the world whatever information we want to provide

• Now we can access the Web and send e-mail or make phone calls from a flight 30,000 feet up in the sky

Education and Training

• With information technology, a variety of ‘distance learning’ opportunities developed. Students in rural towns that cannot afford a teacher for specialized subjects take classes offered in nearby cities by interactive television

• Speech recognition is a useful tool in many education and training programs. Computer programs that teach foreign languages give instruction in correct pronunciation if they do not recognize what the user says

Education and Training• Another successful education application is teaching

illiterate adults to read. Traditional methods fail for many people who are embarrassed, are uninspired by the teaching techniques, or are intimidated by a teacher’s impatience with their mistakes

• People who work full time, having varying work schedules that conflict with normal class schedules, or have small children at home benefit from the flexibility of Web courses

• People who cannot travel easily because of disabilities benefit from increased learning opportunities at home

Crime Fighting

• Matching of fingerprints and photographs of suspects can now be done by computer

• Fast processors, large data-storage capacity, and fast algorithms for processing digitized images made it possible for police to use a computer system to generate a composite photo of a suspect from a witness’ description, then search databases with criminal mug shots to find a match

Crime Fighting

• Specialized Internet newsgroup and Web sites help solve and deter crimes. Dealers in collectible items post information about stolen art, rare books, and even valuable baseball cards, so that a thief can be caught when trying to sell them

• In Hong Kong, the HK Police Force has developed a simulation system with real video to train the police officers to handle different crime environments

Health and Medicine

• Computers are used in virtually all phases of medicine, from research to the operating room to maintain patient records.

• Physicians use machines such as CT (computer-aided tomography) scanners and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines for medical imaging.

• Patient-monitoring devices of all sorts are now routinely used during and after surgery, providing more information about the patient’s condition and quickly warning of complications

Health and Medicine

• Hospitals and medical centers replaced many paper patient records with computerized records.

• Many computer-based systems aid doctors in diagnosing diseases, some are databases that can be reached by entering symptoms

Health and Medicine

• Telemedicine refers to remote performance of medical exams, analyses, and procedures using specialized equipment and computer networks

• Telemedicine is used on long airplane flights to help treat a sick passenger and to ascertain whether an emergency landing is needed

Health and Medicine

• One of the most heartwarming applications of information technology is the restoration of abilities, productivity, and independence to people with physical disabilities

• People with poor eyesight can direct a computer display to use a large type size

• People who are blind, computers equipped with speech synthesizers read aloud what a sighted person sees on the screen

Automation

• Many factories and warehouses now use computer-controlled automation

• Robotic arms and other robotic devices are another form of automation. Robot arms are used in factories to assemble products faster and more accurately than people can.

• Smart cards are the size of credit cards, but they contain a microprocessor and memory. Hundreds of applications, including uses of financial transactions, health care, credit cards, phone cards are being developed

Environmental Protection

• Electronic storage of text, and the ability to edit and update have reduced the need for paper in many businesses and the amount of trash produced

• Electronic books have the potential to reduce use of paper drastically

• Storage of paper records is another big expense that is being reduced by electronic media

Telecommunications

• Information technology has improved people could accesInformation technology has improved people could access Internet anytime, anywheres Internet anytime, anywhere

• Turn any place into a productive work placeTurn any place into a productive work place• Turn waiting time into productive timeTurn waiting time into productive time• Telecommunications has also shortened the distance Telecommunications has also shortened the distance

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