IB ITGS - 1. Introduction

What is ITGS?

• Information Technology in a Global Society is the study of how developments in IT affect people and society.

The ITGS triangle

• There are four core aspects of ITGS:

  • Social and ethical significance
  • IT systems
  • Application to specific scenarios
  • Stakeholders

  

Strand 1: Social and ethical significance

• Issues of social and ethical significance can arise whenever IT is used. These issues have social impacts on stakeholders.
• These issues are:
  • Reliability refers to how well a computer system works: if it functions as intended or fails and crashes.
  • Integrity refers to the correctness of data.
  • Security is concerned with protecting IT systems from unauthorized users.
  • Privacy is the ability to control how data about us is used.
  • A person becomes anonymous if they hide their identity and have total privacy.
  • Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind.
  • Copyright law is designed to protect intellectual property from unauthorized reproduction.
  • Authenticity involves a user proving their identity to gain access to a computer.
  • Digital divide and equality of access: IT has not developed at the same rate for everybody in all parts of the world. There are often individuals who lack access to technology.
  • Surveillance involves using IT to monitor people.
  • Globalization and cultural diversity: IT has helped to reduce global boundaries and speed up the global spread of news and culture.
  • Policies are rules designed to control the way people use IT, often in the form of laws.
  • Standards and protocols are technical rules that hardware and software designers should follow.
  • People and machines concerns the way that humans interact with IT.
  • Digital citizenship involves being a good citizen in a digital world.

Strand 2: Applications to specific areas

• Business and employment: many businesses make heavy use of IT to develop, advertise, and sell their products and services.
• Education and training: the availability of vast amounts of information for free on the Internet has opened up new educational possibilities for many people.
• Environment: robot vehicles and satellite technology have allowed us to explore and map Earth’s surface.
• Health: IT has helped advance healthcare in daily tasks. It also raises health concerns, such as addiction.
• Home and leisure: IT has changed the way we use our leisure time and the way that we interact with friends.
• Politics and government: governments have used IT to increase efficiency and transparency, as well as promote political campaigns.

Strand 3: IT Systems

• All IT systems take data as input and process it according to programmed instructions into output.

• A system will also store data and communicate with other systems via networks.

• They consist of:

  • Hardware: to input, process, and output data.
  • Software: to control the hardware.
  • People: to use the system.
  • Data: on which the system performs work.