Ethics for the information age Chapter 1

1. According to the author, why is there good reason to say we are living in the Information

Age?

According to the author, there is good reason to say we are living in the Information

Age because computer and communication technologies have made it easy to collect,

store, manipulate, and distribute vast amounts of information.

What can the Amish teach us about our relationship with technology?

The Amish demonstrate that people have the ability to evaluate every technology

critically and determine whether its use will improve or degrade their quality of life.

Name three aids to manual calculating.

Three aids to manual calculating are the tablet, the abacus, and the mathematical

table.

4. Why did commercial mechanical calculators become practical in the nineteenth century?

Commercial mechanical calculators became practical in the late nineteenth century

because advances in machine tools and mass-production methods made it possible to

manufacture reliable devices at a reasonable price

5. Why did the market for mechanical calculators grow significantly in the late nineteenth

century?

Rapid industrialization, economic expansion, and a concentration of corporate power

in the late 19th century created a growing market for devices that could speed up

accounting.

6. What factors helped the Burroughs Adding Machine Company to surpass a large number

of competitors to become the most successful calculator company by the 1890s?

The Burroughs Adding Machine Company surpassed its competitors by combining an

excellent product with excellent marketing.

How did the widespread adoption of the mechanical calculator change the office environment?

The widespread adoption of the mechanical calculators led to the lowering of wages

of bookkeepers and the transformation of a male-only occupation to an occupation

employing a large number of women.

8. What needs motivated the invention of the cash register?

The invention of the cash register was a response to two needs: the need to prevent

clerks from embezzling money, and the need for better sales accounting.

Give four examples of how punched cards were used by large organizations in the early

twentieth century.

In the early twentieth century, the U.S. Census Bureau used punched cards to store

census data, Marshall Field's used punched cards to analyze information generated by

cash registers railroads used punched cards to send out bills more frequently, and the

Pennsylvania Steel Company used punched cards to do cost accounting on manufacturing processes

What are the three principal components of a data-processing system?

A data-processing system has three principle components. The First component inputs

data, the second performs calculations, and the third outputs data.

Name three ways the development of radar in World War II stimulated advances in

computing.

The development of radar in world war II stimulated three advances in computing: Electrostatic memory ( exemplified by the Williams Tube), semiconductor memory (exemplified by the transistor), and graphical user interfaces (exemplified by Doug Engelbart's oNLine System)

Why did IBM quickly overtake Remington Rand as the leading computer manufacturer

in the United States in the 1950s?

Ibm quickly took over Remington RAnd because it had a larger base of existing customers and a much better sales and marketing organization and it made greater investments in research and development

What was the motivation for the creation of higher-level programming languages? How

did the introduction of higher-level programming languages change computing?

These could make programming less tedious and error prone and improve programmer productivity. Higher level programming languages enabled programs to be moved more easily from one manufacturers computers too the others. It lead to a large increase in programmers.

How did time-sharing give more organizations access to electronic digital computers in

the 1960s?

Time sharing gave more organizations access to electronic digital computers in the 1960s by allowing them to share the cost of purchasing...( or leasing) and an operating system.

In what way did the Cold War accelerate the development of technology needed for the

personal computer?

The Cold War had a minuteman II missile program that was the largest consumer of integrated circuits in the United States, representing about 20% of total production..In the course of making the chips, manufacturers found ways to make chips more affordable and more reliable.

What was the principal innovation of the IBM System/360?

Th innovation was the creation of a series of nineteen binary-compatable computers. All nineteen computers had the same instruction set. That means customers could upgrade from one IBM system/360 to a bigger, faster, computer in the same product line without having to rewrite their programs....

Can you think of a practical reason why the semaphore telegraph was adopted more

rapidly on the continent of Europe than in the British Isles?

Th British isle has a tendency for more fog and rain. This makes the semaphore telegraph more suitable for Europe as it requires atmospheric conditions that present good visibility.

Give two examples of how the introduction ofMorse's telegraph changed life in America.

Morse's Telegraph put the Pony Express out of business and made fire alarm boxes possible in urban areas.

Briefly describe three ways in which society changed by adopting the telephone.

The phone took way boundaries between private and public life between family and business. The phone eroded traditional hierarchies. The telephone enabled the creation of the first "On-line" community.

What is the difference between a circuit-switched network and a packet-switched network?

A circuit switched network sets up a permanent physical circuit between the machines that are communicating, but the packet switched network divides messages into groups of bits called packets.

Why does the Internet have a decentralized structure?

...The internet has such a structure because ARPA did not want the ARPANET to collapse if a single computer were lost. it is also reported that fear of a nuclear attcak led to this design.

How did the National Science Foundation stimulate the creation of commercial, longdistance

data networks in the United States?

By simultaneously encouraging commercial use of regional NSFNET networks and banning commercial traffic on the NSFNET backbone.

Describe two ways in which the codex represented an improvement over the scroll.

The codex is more durable than the papyrus scroll, and it makes it much easier for readers to locate a particular passage in a book.

What is hypertext?

Hypertext is a linked network of nodes containing information.

How is a hypertext link similar to a citation in a book? How is it different?

Both point to a source of related information, but a hypertext link alllows you to jump right into related material by clicking the link.

Who invented the computer mouse?

Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse in the 1960s...

The Apple Macintosh succeeded in the marketplace, while the Apple Lisa failed. Give

two reasons why this happened.

The Lisa was too expensive and had too slow of a processor. The Mac was cheaper and faster.

In what fundamental way is an Apple HyperCard stack different from the World

WideWeb?

With the Apple HyperCard hyperlinks connect pages on the same computer.

Berners-Lee decided to build theWorldWideWeb on top of the TCP/IP protocol.Why

did this decision help ensure the success of theWeb?

This type of protocol made it possible for the web to run of different manufacturer's computers and operating systems.

What was the first widely used Web browser? Name four popular Web browsers in use

today.

Mosaic was the first widely used web browser. Firefox/safari/explorer/Chrome

What is a search engine? Describe the two types of search engines.

A search engine is a program that accepts a list of keywords form a user and searches a database of documents, and return those documents most accurately matching the keywords. Crawler based engines automatically create the database of information about web pages. The other type of engine relies on databases of web pages humans constructed.(OpenDirecttory)

32. What is information technology?

Information technology is devices used in the creation, storage, manipulation, exchange, and dissemination of data, sound, and/or images.

Name three inventions described in this chapter that were created for a military application.

ARPANET, RADAR and ENIAC.

Give four examples from the book of how a social condition influenced the development

of a new technology.

The need for large amounts of timely information by corporate managers fueled the growth of the manual calculator market. The need to store and manipulate large amounts of data prompted the invention of punched card tabulations and data processing systems. A demand for less expensive access to computers stimulated the development of time sharing. BASIC became popular when there was a demand for an easy to learn programming language. AN interest in accessing and sharing information lead to the rapid adoption of the world wide web by Tim berners Lee.

Give four examples from the book of a social change brought about by the adoption of

a new technology.

The adoption of phones broke traditional barriers between work and home. The telephone gave rise to online communities through party lines. Manual calculators led to deskilling and feminization of bookkeeping. Time sharing systems gave many more people access to computers which they used for both educational and entertainment. Television broadcasts have influenced the outcome of the US Presidential Election of 2000.