Basics of ICT

Information

description of circumstances and incidents which are important in the context of a system

Data

represents information based on a known form or supposed agreement in a computer readable format

Digital data

represented by symbols

Analogue data

displayed by a physical value which changes corresponding to considered circumstances

Information system

is the amount of human, computerized and mechanical instances that cooperate to process information

Hardware

Generic term for physical (mechanical and electronic) equipment of a system (e.g.: computer)

Software

Generic term for executable programs and corresponding data. (e.g.: operating system, development software, application software)

User interface

Position or action for users to interact with machines (e.g., light switch)

Central processing unit (CPU)

processes data, functional unit executing instruction

Random access memory (RAM)

loads open programs and operating system data currently in use from the slower secondary storage

Cache

Memory that stores copies of frequently used data. It’s much faster than RAM, though much lower capacity

The bus system

A bus is the connector system that is used by all components of a computer and

exchanges information via electrical or optical signals.

Cloud computing

a model that enables to share a pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, services) via on-demand network access

Application software

offers solutions for functional problems, e.g., Accounting, statistics, writing, image editing.

Development software

allows the creation and modification of programs with a software development environment, e.g.: Xcode (MacOS), Eclipse

Middleware

enables communication between software component a and software component b by providing a platform to exchange data, e.g.: Java Enterprise Edition.

System software

enables and controls hardware and provides basic services for other programs, e.g.: Operating System.

The process of digitalisation

the conversion from an analogue to a digital signal.

Quantization

the process of transforming continuous values of measured intensities (e.g.: colors) into discrete values

Modulation technology

used to transmit information, including audio and video signals, over different transmission media.

Compression technologies

represent information in a shorter form by eliminating redundancy

The Internet

a diverse set of independent networks, interlinked to provide its users with the appearance of a single, uniform network.

Protocols

a set of common rules that allow networked entities to exchange information

IP addresses

unique numeric identifiers assigned to devices on a network and are used by routers to direct data packets to their intended destinations

Ubiquitous computing

human-computer interaction paradigm integrating information processing into objects and activities of the everyday life

Piconet

a network of Bluetooth devices that are connected together using a central-peripheral relationship

Localized Location Computation

Systems where the object being located computes its own position based on a given Infrastructure

The WWW

an information retrieval service of the Internet

Hyperlinks

the connections or references between hypertext documents or elements

Hypertext

a type of text that contains links to other text, allowing readers to navigate between different sections or pages of a document or website

Cookies

small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s web browser file (text document)