IB ITGS - 1. Introduction
Information Technology in a Global Society is the study of how developments in IT affect people and society.
There are four core aspects of ITGS:
Social and ethical significance
IT systems
Application to specific scenarios
Stakeholders
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.
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.
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.
Information Technology in a Global Society is the study of how developments in IT affect people and society.
There are four core aspects of ITGS:
Social and ethical significance
IT systems
Application to specific scenarios
Stakeholders
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.
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.
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.
