Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Networking and Communication
Communication via computer involves the same storage and retrieval of informa
tion used in the previous examples, as well as computation of data (which we'll
discuss soon), but in the context of our local computer interacting with comput
ers elsewhere. For example, Internet banking may be considered as, fundamen
tally, an advanced financial program, with data stored and retrieved at a bank,
and with communication lines available to allow you access to that data.
Similarly, much activity browsing on the World Wide Web involves folks storing
materials on machines throughout the world and you retrieving that material
from your computer. The same general statement could be made regarding the
use of email—one person stores a message and another retrieves it with an
electronic delivery system in the middle. Although a computer network expands
the realm of what information you can obtain, many of the most popular Internet
applications exploit the same capabilities that individual computers are good
at—but on a larger scale.
help me?
Computers are capable of performing large mathematical and
symbolic computations accurately and efficiently. This processing
ability plays a major role in our everyday life. Let's look first at
weather forecasting and then at some of our personal activities that
are positively influenced by a computer's computational skills.
Weather Forecasting: Weather forecasting is a good illustration
of making particularly good use of computers' ability to compute
data. First, monitoring instruments record current conditions, deter
mining such factors as temperature, wind speed and direction, visi
bility, and precipitation. These readings are taken at many observa
tion sites, both on land and in the air (through the use of aircraft,
balloons, satellites, and so on), and give a good description of the
current weather. This phase of work requires the accumulation and
storage of massive amounts of data, so computers are very well
suited for this dataacquisition phase of meteorology. Computers
can continually monitor sensors and store readings. Further, data
can be scanned for reasonableness and consistency with nearby
readings, and this can help identify malfunctioning hardware.
