Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the underlying answers will require your friend to introduce com
puter concepts and show how these concepts work in practice. At
other times, answers may be short and simple. Such is the nature of
genuine discussion. Of course, because this topic is printed rather
than in an interactive, oral format, I needed to anticipate what ques
tions you might ask when, and to organize questions and answers
into a logical framework. In what follows, the questions often were
suggested by contact with computer users or during classes with
students. Thus, the discussions aim to address real concerns by real
people—even though the ordering of questions may be different
than what you might generate yourself.
To begin, we need to clarify some common terminology. For
better or worse, conversations on any subject require all parties to
have a common frame of reference, and this includes an under
standing of common words. With this understanding, we'll look at
computers from the most basic level: their organization.
“data,” “computer applications,” and “processing,”
and how do they differ?
Each of these terms arises frequently in conversations about
computing, so it is particularly helpful to understand these words at
an early stage.
For a computer to perform any work, it needs instructions to
follow. Contrary to popular images from sciencefiction movies,
such as C3PO in
Star Wars
or David in
A.I.
, a computer has no
insight or intuition. Instead, it must be told how to accomplish every
task, and these instructions must be given in great detail. These
instructions are called
programs
; a program is simply a detailed
sequence of instructions that tells a computer how to perform a task.
As an example, when we use a computer to help type a paper, the
computer utilizes a program that contains instructions to place
words on a screen and to move the cursor from one line to another.
In contrast,
data
are the pieces of information that are handled
according to the instructions in a program. As you will see in
Chapter 2, data may appear in a variety of types, including num
bers, characters, and graphical images. To continue the document
typing example, the characters typed by a user constitute one type
