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.