Wednesday, September 30, 2009

ASSIGNMENT 6

If you were hired by the university president as an IT consultant, what would you suggest (technology, infrastructure, innovations, steps, processes, etc) in order for the internet connectivity be improved? (3000words)

Identifying first the terms:

Technology

Technology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment. Technology is a term with origins in the Greek technología (τεχνολογία) — téchnē (τέχνη), 'craft' and logía (λογία), 'saying'.[1] However, a strict definition is elusive; "technology" can refer to material objects of use to humanity, such as machines, hardware or utensils, but can also encompass broader themes, including systems, methods of organization, and techniques. The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include "construction technology", "medical technology", or "state-of-the-art technology".

The human species' use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The prehistorical discovery of the ability to control fire increased the available sources of food and the invention of the wheel helped humans in travelling in and controlling their environment. Recent technological developments, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale. However, not all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the development of weapons of ever-increasing destructive power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.

Technology has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. Many technological processes produce unwanted by-products, known as pollution, and deplete natural resources, to the detriment of the Earth and its environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and new technology often raises new ethical questions. Examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, a term originally applied only to machines, and the challenge of traditional norms.

Philosophical debates have arisen over the present and future use of technology in society, with disagreements over whether technology improves the human condition or worsens it. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism, and similar movements criticise the pervasiveness of technology in the modern world, opining that it harms the environment and alienates people; proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and techno-progressivism view continued technological progress as beneficial to society and the human condition. Indeed, until recently, it was believed that the development of technology was restricted only to human beings, but recent scientific studies indicate that other primates and certain dolphin communities have developed simple tools and learned to pass their knowledge to other generations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology

Infrastructure

Infrastructure can be defined as the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, [1] or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. [2] The term typically refers to the technical structures that support a society, such as roads, water supply, sewers, power grids, telecommunications, and so forth. Viewed functionally, infrastructure facilitates the production of goods and services; for example, roads enable the transport of raw materials to a factory, and also for the distribution of finished products to markets. In some contexts, the term may also include basic social services such as schools and hospitals [3]. In military parlance, the term refers to the buildings and permanent installations necessary for the support, redeployment, and operation of military forces [4].

In this article, infrastructure will be used in the sense of technical structures or physical networks that support society, unless specified otherwise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure

Innovations

The term innovation refers to a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. Following Schumpeter (1934), contributors to the scholarly literature on innovation typically distinguish between invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas applied successfully in practice. In many fields, something new must be substantially different to be innovative, not an insignificant change, e.g., in the arts, economics, business and government policy. In economics the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. The goal of innovation is positive change, to make someone or something better. Innovation leading to increased productivity is the fundamental source of increasing wealth in an economy.

Innovation is an important topic in the study of economics, business, design, technology, sociology, and engineering. Colloquially, the word "innovation" is often synonymous with the output of the process. However, economists tend to focus on the process itself, from the origination of an idea to its transformation into something useful, to its implementation; and on the system within which the process of innovation unfolds. Since innovation is also considered a major driver of the economy, especially when it leads to increasing productivity, the factors that lead to innovation are also considered to be critical to policy makers. In particular, followers of innovation economics stress using public policy to spur innovation and growth.

Those who are directly responsible for application of the innovation are often called pioneers in their field, whether they are individuals or organizations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation

Steps/Processes

Steps was a British pop group that achieved a series of charted singles between 1997 and 2001. Their name was based around a simple marketing gimmick: each of their music videos were choreographed, and the dance steps were included with most of their single releases. Steps formed on 7 May 1997 and disbanded on 26 December 2001. In total Steps have sold over 15 million records, and achieved 14 consecutive Top 5 singles - a feat only surpassed by Oasis (with 18) and The Beatles and Westlife (who both had 22).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steps_(group)

Process(in computing)

In computing, a process is an instance of a computer program, consisting of one or more threads, that is being sequentially executed[1] by a computer system that has the ability to run several computer programs concurrently.

A computer program itself is just a passive collection of instructions, while a process is the actual execution of those instructions. Several processes may be associated with the same program; for example, opening up several instances of the same program often means more than one process is being executed. In the computing world, processes are formally defined by the operating system (OS) running them and so may differ in detail from one OS to another.

A single computer processor executes one or more (multiple) instructions at a time (per clock cycle), one after the other (this is a simplification; for the full story, see superscalar CPU architecture). To allow users to run several programs at once (e.g., so that processor time is not wasted waiting for input from a resource), single-processor computer systems can perform time-sharing. Time-sharing allows processes to switch between being executed and waiting (to continue) to be executed. In most cases this is done very rapidly, providing the illusion that several processes are executing 'at once'. (This is known as concurrency or multiprogramming.) Using more than one physical processor on a computer, permits true simultaneous execution of more than one stream of instructions from different processes, but time-sharing is still typically used to allow more than one process to run at a time. (Concurrency is the term generally used to refer to several independent processes sharing a single processor; simultaneously is used to refer to several processes, each with their own processor.) Different processes may share the same set of instructions in memory (to save storage), but this is not known to any one process. Each execution of the same set of instructions is known as an instance— a completely separate instantiation of the program.

For security and reliability reasons most modern operating systems prevent direct communication between 'independent' processes, providing strictly mediated and controlled inter-process communication functionality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_(computing)

Idea:

If i were hired as an It consultant in our school the first step I will do to improve the internet connection is the infrastructure. Because as we all know proper infrastructure in a school is a great aspect that schools should have to proper knowledge to teach students.Because, how can you use technology without the proper infrastructure ? Proper infrastructure can give the students a refreshing mind in studying, a better thinking to pass subjects or improve the grades. So I suggest the infrastructure first is to be done.

The second thing that i would suggest to be implemented is the technology. Because in the first step that we had we set the proper infrastructure in order to use the technology. It is just like, in my mind the two things I would set up first was the infrastructure and the technology. Technology leads to knowledge and knowledge leads to power. Getting the new technology can give a great idea to the students to know to think the future technology that they can produce and because of that gaining knowledge is starting. Power? because the knowledge that the god given us is really a big thing in our live to have. We can see that those people who are in the top of their success was the people who have the knowledge.

The third thing i want to suggest was the innovation. Innovation in the sense that changing new technology. Because as we all know technology is really a fast changing. So innovations is really applied in the steps or process here.

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