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Prehistoric man did not have the Internet, but it appears that he needed a way to count and make calculations. The limitations of the human bodys ten fingers and ten toes apparently caused early man to construct a tool to help with those calculations. Scientists now know that humankind invented an early form of computers. Their clue was a bone carved with prime numbers found in 8,500 BC.
The abacus was the next leap forward in computing between 1000 BC and 500 BD. This apparatus used a series of moveable beads or rocks. The positions changed to enter a number and again to perform mathematical operations. Leonardo DaVinci was credited with the invention of the worlds first mechanical calculator in 1500. In 1642, Blaise Pascals adding machine upstaged DaVincis marvel and moved computing forward again.
In 19th century England, Charles Babbage, a mathematician, proposed the construction of a machine that he called the Babbage Difference Engine. It would not only calculate numbers, it would also be capable of printing mathematical tables. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA (near San Diego) built a working replica from the original drawings. Visitors can see in the device in operation there. Unable to construct the actual device, he earned quite a few detractors among Englands literate citizens. However, Babbage made a place for himself in history as the father of computing. Not satisfied with the machines limitations, he drafted plans for the Babbage Analytical Engine. He intended for this computing device to use punch cards as the control mechanism for calculations. This feature would make it possible for his computer to use previously performed calculations in new ones.
Babbages idea caught the attention of Ada Byron Lovelace who had an undying passion for math. She also saw possibilities that the Analytical Machine could produce graphics and music. She helped Babbage move his project from idea to reality by documenting how the device would calculate Bernoulli numbers. She later received recognition for writing the worlds first computer program. The United States Department of Defense named a computer language in her honor in 1979.
The computers that followed built on each previous success and improved it. In 1943, the first programmable computer Turing COLOSSUS appeared. It was pressed into service to decipher World War II coded messages from Germany. ENIAC, the brain, was the first electronic
computer, in 1946. In 1951, the U.S. Census Bureau became the first government agency to buy a computer, UNIVAC.
SUMMARY
The advantages and the disadvantages of having the computers in your office networked together. ... Introduction In this report I will be explaining to you the advantages and the disadvantages of having the computers in your office networked together. My report will explain in as much detail you need for you to understand the compensation of having a network, and what you need to know about how a network system can be brought to you the easiest way possible. A network throughout your office will most definitely be a need to improve your business and bring your work colleagues closer together to create a much improved work environment which in turn will boost the motivation of your employees. The Facts The idea of linking all of your computers in your office may sound very intimidating and complicated and you are probably thinking how can your business benefit from spending money on something that seems to be not that much. Below I have compiled a list of what
Computer-based systems are organized to enhance the quality of working life for clerks, administrative staff, professionals, and managers. Computerization has touched more people more visibly in their work than in any other kind of setting-home, schools, churches, banking, and so on. Workplaces are good places to examine how the dreams and dilemmas of computerization really work out for large numbers of people under an immense variety of social and technical conditions.
Office work has always involved keeping records. In the early twentieth century, the technologies and organization of office work underwent substantial change. Firms began to adopt telephones and typewriters, both of which had been recently invented. By the 1930s and 1940s, many manufactures devised electromechanical machines to help manipulate, sort, and tally specialized paper records automatically. Some of the more expensive pieces of equipment, such as specialized card-accounting machines, were much more affordable and justifiable in organizations that centralize their key office activities. Business such as insurance companies and banks, along with public agencies, adopted computer-based information systems on a large scale in the 1960s. Many of the early digital computer systems replaced electromechanical papercard systems. The earliest systems were designed for batch operation. Clerks filled in paper forms with information about a firm's clients, and the forms were then periodically sent to a special group of keypunchers to translate the data onto cardboard card. These card each stored one line of data, up to eighty characters. They were punched with a series of holes for each character or number. Keypunch machines were clanky devices with a typewriter-style keyboard, a bin for storing blank card, and a holder for the card being punched. There was no simple way for a keypunch operator to correct an error. Cards containing errors had to be completely repunched. The punched cards were then taken to a data-processing department for a weekly or monthly run, during which time records were updated and reports were produced. It often took a few cycles-sometimes weeks or months-to identify and correct errors. Using these early computerized systems required immense precision and care, since inaccuracies were detected and corrected slowly. In addition, the data from one information system were usually formatted in a way that did not make them accessible to other systems. Professionals and managers often waited a few months for a new kind of report, and reports that required merging data from several separate systems were often viewed as prohibitively complex, time-consuming, and expensive to create. The earliest computer systems were speedier than the hand in processing large volumes of highly specialized transactions. But they were also rigid and cumbersome for many people who used them.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, virtually every organization bought PCs and workstations. But the PC revolution did not merely change the nature of office equipment - it expanded the range of people who use computers routinely to include a much larger fraction of professionalsmanagers of all kinds, architects, accountants, lawyers, and so on. Many larger organizations are beginning to use computerized communication systems, like electronic mail, to help managers and professionals keep in contact when they are out of the office. And a few organizations are experimenting with pushing some of their staff out of regular offices and creating virtual offices in locations close to their clients, their homes (telecommuting), and other more convenient or less costly location.
I worked in the trading support department of a merchant bank in the late 1980's. My main responsibility was to write computer programs so the front office (referring to traders) and the
back office (referring to personnel that process tickets or orders for traders) of the trading department could operate smoothly and at the same time facilitate the communication of the two offices through computer systems. My department supported foreign currency traders, government bond and municipal bond traders. Unlike retail banks, merchant bank is the so called wholesale bank, their clients are other banks, institutions, pension funds, or trust funds. Client lists may not be large, yet the amount of money transacted each day is tremendous (few millions per client). I remember when I first started working, we had traders that occupied about half of a floor in one of the high rise building in downtown Bunker Hill area. There were about 2 floors of personnel supported these traders: 1)one whole floor of "back office" personnel; 2)half a floor of hardware support personnel, the "help desk", who took care of hardware hook ups, phone lines, cables, and machine maintenance; 3)half a floor of software support personnel, who wrote computer systems to make trading easier and generate profit and loss report for the management in a timely manner. Programs were generally written separately for the trading floor, the back office, and the management.
Program integration were not sophisticated, each program required separate entry (some were political reasons) of data. If a particular system happened to be used in another location (the dept. also supported Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, Frankfurt, and New York,) the programs would need to be "tweaked" to fit the need of the particular location. If there were changes to be made in any particular program in any of these locations, analysts would have to fly out to the location, get the necessary requirements and come back to Los Angeles to finish modifying the programs. When all the programs were completed, programmers would have to install them on location and modify any last minutes changes. The process was lengthy and costly. Inter office memorandums had to be produced, "cc" as many as it was necessary and hand delivered to the person. Normal working hours for V.P.s were generally from 6:00 AM to about 7:00 PM - due to the time differences of New York and Far East financial market (7:00 PM in L.A. is 9:00 AM in Tokyo).
In the early 90's, with the advancement of computing technology, our department started to experiment with artificial intelligent, voice recognition devices, and scanning devices to make data entry easier and not so redundant. LAN (Local Area Network) was the technology of choice, IOM started to appear via computers. Top managers' "normal working hours" had shrunk! With the price reduction of PC, dumb terminals were replaced by workstations. Program generators, such as PowerBuilder, were sophisticated enough that it required much less time for programmers to produce any custom codes. Traders gather information from all over the world to conduct their trades. I remember that one of the systems written for foreign currency traders required live feed from Reuters and CNN, foreign currency conversion calculator and client information were also required on the same screen. Special programmers had to be hired to write that particular part of the program. The system was considered pioneer in the industry, other banks were quite anxious to recruit those programmers to work for them and develop something similar for their banks!
By the mid 90's, multi-tasking on PC was taken for granted for most of the users. However, with the more integrated software programs, hardware technologies, and the ease of downloading and uploading data among different plat forms (i.e. computers, operating systems), the company was able to move some of the back office support personnel away to a suburban location where it was much less costly. Upon my leaving the company in the mid 90's, the back office support personnel were completely relocated to the suburban location; my department were in the process of moving everyone up to Northern California where the systems engineering unit was located; the only survivors were the hardware support personnel - to maintain the ever growing telephone, fax, and cable lines.
In such a short period of time (from the late 80's to the mid 90's) I personally experienced the power of technological advancement and its effect on the working world. It is frightening to see how fast things have changed. Yet, it is also exciting to be part of this ever changing and diverse world. This ties to what Kelly said regarding the technology: "the point of technology is to make higher-quality and more diverse products..." (Kelly, p.245); he further mentioned: "the advantages of civilization are options and diversity...increasing opportunities for people to be creative in new ways that you don't have in those tribal societies." (Kelly, p.247); and finally he said: "We dominate nature at first so that we can survive, but beyond survival I believe the focus of technology." (Kelly, p. 251)
Today, the typical clerk, professional, or manager is much more likely to use a variety of powerful computer systems than would his or her counterpart ten and certainly fifteen years ago. But have jobs improved in a way that is commensurate with the technical improvement in computer systems? That is a key question.
During the next decade organizations will continue to computerize work - automating new activities and replacing earlier systems with newer technologies. Organizations and workplaces differ and their appropriate work organization technologies differ. No single logic has been applied toward changing work with computerization. So key controversies cannot be automatically resolved by a new kind of computer technology, such as expert systems, personal computing, groupware, networking or voice recognition. New technologies create new opportunities, but do not always require that the opportunities will be exploited, for better or worse. The choices of how to computerize involve practical judgments about what makes workers more productive. But it also engages managers' preferences for control and innovation. In general, the majority of us exaggerate the short-run impacts of technological change and underestimate the long-run impacts. Really big technological changes permeate our homes, our personal relations, our daily habits, the way we think and speak. Technological advances had consequences that nobody could have foreseen when they were new. The revolution in computerization will have consequences that are just as pervasive, intimate, and surprising.
Information technology is replacing energy as society's main resource. Many people are concerned that too much emphasis has been put on what the computer can do to streamline business and too little on how it may be affecting the quality of our lives. For example, is it distorting the meaning of thought? That is, is it absurd and dangerous to attribute the capabilities of thinking and creativity to a computer? People have experience, convictions, and cultural traditions. Are these qualities being devalued? If so, perhaps we are heading into an era in which machinelike qualities of speed and problem solving will be valued more highly than what used to be called humane qualities. As a result, many people believe computers have the potential to contribute to worker dissatisfaction.
Consider the potential for computer-based systems in business to be used to monitor employees. What if computers were (and some are already) programmed to check your speed, the pauses you make, the breaks you take, the rate of keying errors? Would it be fair for the company to do this to make sure it retains only the most efficient workers, and thus increase the value of goods and services it has to sell? Or would this detract from your dignity as a human beingyour right to do some things better than you do others? And would this type of company get high-quality decisions from its employeesor would the employees be too afraid to work creatively? In addition, a growing percentage of the work force is working at home. Workers can communicate with their offices via a microcomputer and special communications software. In many cases, this arrangement enables workers in metropolitan areas to get work don instead of sitting in traffic. However, how does working at home affect employee morale, efficiency, and motivation? How does the employer maintain control over the employee? With these issues in mind, is the employee who works at home really more productive? Or not?
Another important issue relates to the disabled. For most of us, computers make our lives more convenient. But for some people with disabilities, computers play a much greater role. Computers have the potential of equalizing the workplace by enabling people with mobility, vision, and hearing impairments to do the same work as someone who isn't handicapped. Some disabled workers have
difficulty holding down more than two keys at once or using a mouse. Blind workers need special translator hardware so they can read text and numbers. Fortunately, many add-on products are available to adapt standard microcomputers to the needs of the disabled, including voice translators for the blind and software that modifies the way the keyboard and the mouse are used. However, products such as these vary in sophistication and are usually quite expensive. As a result, very few companies make these purchases. Aren't these companies discriminating against the handicapped? Many legislators are actively working to pass a bill that will make this form of discrimination illegal.
In addition, software piracy, or theft, has become a major concern of software writers and manufacturers. The act of piracy is not as dramatic as it sounds; in most cases, it simply means illegally copying private-domain (copyrighted) software onto blank disks. Because some of this softwarefrom games to heavy-duty business publishing programsis expensive, it's tempting to avoid purchasing an off-the-shelf package by accepting a friends offer to supply free copies. But, according to the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Computer Software Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendment of 1983, this practice is illegal. It is also unethical. Computer programmers and software companies often spend years developing, writing, testing, and marketing software programs only to lose many royalty dollars to software pirates. If you spent several years writing a book only to lose royalties through the distribution of illegal copied volumes, how would you feel? The issue is the same.
Some software manufacturers write copy-protected programs into their software to prevent illegal copying; other software authors offer free (or inexpensive) copies of their programs (called shareware) through computer-user clubs and publications. Just remember: Before you consider making a copy or accepting a copy of a software program, make sure it's legalits theft can result in severe penalties.
These are only a few of the many computer-related issues that are being discussed today. Keep in mind, however, that although these problems certainly deserve everyone's attention, they should not obscure the opportunities that will be opened up if you know how to use computers in your chosen occupation.