Life in The Information Age - How Offices Have Changed

An office is a perfect example of how far the world has come in the last 40 years, especially in the technological state.

When looking at pictures of a 1960’s office you can see how different it is compared to a modern office of today. You can see that there are no computers and there are a lot of papers and files stacked all over the office. You can also see that there are basic calculators in the background that are much bigger than the typical scientific calculators that you would see today.

Towards the 1980’s, computers were invited into the office and were seen as one of the biggest luxuries any office could have. Although they were seen as a luxury, they still had nothing on the computers of today, they had CRT monitors without decent software like Windows, instead they would have MS-DOS software, and they did have hard drives but they still did not have a lot on memory to store lots of things on the computers so lots of paper would still have to be used. As the 1980’s went on the software on computers was forever growing and creating advanced graphics for users to enjoy the experience of using a computer much more, another feature that was introduced was the growth of the memory that was included with new and improved computers.

During the 1990’s the world of computers in the office were at an all time high and with the memory included increasing it was helping files to be stored electronically on the computers and reduce the amount of paper having to be used around the office. In the year of 1995 was the introduction of both the Windows operating software and Internet Explorer proving that the growth of the computers and software used in the office was really beginning to be a great help and making some jobs much easier.

Ever since the 1990’s the use of computers in the office has grown massively with the introduction of smart phones and devices being used to do the majority of things that some computers are able to do. The introductions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista have proved how far things have come from the introduction of Windows 95 in the 1990’s.

It obviously is a massive advantage for everyone and offices across the world but it does come with its disadvantages such as causing loss of jobs due to technology being able to do such jobs more efficiently that humans. 

Life in The Infomation Age

Since computers were invented, every year that goes by something new in the information age is introduced into the world we know.

What is information? Information is the idea of computing and telecommunications, the more information something holds the more powerful it is. 

Without information we would never be in the same technological state we are at this present time, we would have no such things as computers, telephones, Internet, nor would we have things that allow people to travel either near or far, things such as cars, boats and planes, the list of things that we would not have and not be able to do without information is endless.

Information has changed the world that we live in today, it has changed things that wouldn’t be expected to change, things like culture and language in the sense that now we can learn things about different cultures online and find out more information that may change the way people think about culture. Information has generally changed the thinking process of people and how they use different technology to go about their lives.

Working Styles:

Working styles have changed dramatically due to the information age and generally more information and technology being invented making jobs and facilities much easier to use and more convenient to work in. One of the most notable places of work that have changed due technology and the information age would be offices.

Before technology there were many more jobs in places such as offices, factories and banks. Office jobs have been lost such as many typists losing their jobs due to word processing technology who only needs one person controlling it, payroll clerks have lost jobs due to the one person that is needed to input the data into a spreadsheet and calculating the payroll that way, and many clerks that would, before technology, sort out the files in filing cabinets and other such things can now be replaced by one person using a database on a computer system.

Jobs in factories have been lost due to the skilled technicians and machinists being replaced by computer controlled robots which can work faster, longer and more consistently than the workers could, many monitoring jobs have been lost due to data logging equipment that use sensors being invented and many quality control jobs that would have involved things such as routine sampling have been lost due to being replaced by automatic machines.

This is a obvious disadvantage to the information age but it does also create jobs as well, jobs such as engineers are in high demand to build and maintain the quality of the machines and more skilled workers are needed to operate the systems and the new computerised machinery.  

Online Entertainment

In today’s modern society, there are many services in which entertainment is offered to the users of the World Wide Web. There are services such as online gaming, music download services, live streaming and many more.

TV Catch Up

There are many television channels that have recently discovered the world of the internet and decided to produce website that are associated to there television channels. They has designed these websites to be able to broadcast programmes that have already aired on television, many people use it to ‘catch up’ with programmes they have missed or forgotten about the programme and have not watched it. There are two methods in which people are able to watch television on there computers, they can either watch it by streaming it straight to a media player or by downloading it straight to their computer. With online TV catch up services becoming ever more prominent, it is essentials for all of the major television broadcasters to have a feature like this, BBC have the BBC iPlayer which is able to be downloaded as an application on both Windows and Mac operating systems; they were also the first major broadcasters to allow users to download an application on their mobile devices. Following BBC doing this many of the other major broadcasters followed in the footsteps of the BBC by creating TV catch up services and producing mobile device applications.

Spotify

Spotify is a new music streaming service that allows users to stream selected music straight to there computer. It was launched in October 2008 and in November 2010 it was said to have gathered approximately 10 million users; 1 million of these users were paying ones. Spotify has a clever system where, in which, everybody is able to use the service free of charge as long as they have created an account with Spotify, with this membership, users are able to listen to 20 hours of music, on their computer, throughout a month without having to pay a penny, the only disadvantage to this would be that you can listen to one song only 5 times before you are not able to listen to it anymore. They then have another 2 different types of membership, one that costs £4.99 per month and enables users to listen to unlimited music, on their computer, throughout the month paid month. The final membership, that costs £9.99 per month, allows users to listen to unlimited music on their computer or on their mobile devices as long as they are compatible to Spotify. This is how Spotify make money through the services they offer, and it is all completely legal. Spotify is now available on many different platforms including, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and mobile devices that run iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and many more.

I personally use Spotify quite a lot for listening to music that I may not own on my other music players, I am one of the 9 million non paying members as I do not listen to enough music to benefit from the unlimited side of the memberships.

iTunes

iTunes is a music playing entertainment service which offers many useful things. It allows users to manage their music files all in one place and have them all listed in any order they like, it also allows users to do this with things such as music videos, movies and applications all on a desktop computer or a laptop.

iTunes was launched in January 2001 and since then it is said that over 10 million users have downloaded iTunes.

iTunes is able to connect to the iTunes Store; the iTunes Store enables users to download music, music videos, movies, movie rentals, television programmes, iPhone and iPad programmes, audiobooks, Podcasts. Users are now able to download iPhone, iPod and iPad application software from the App Store.

I personally use iTunes everyday to listen to music and watch movies. I also download music from the store quite frequently and it is very convenient and quick as when I have downloaded from other sites such as Amazon, it takes quite a long time to download a song and then I have to import it into my iTunes library which results in making the process of downloading a music file much longer than it needs to be.

Media Piracy

Media piracy is the copying and distributing of media files over the internet, peer to peer programmes such as Limewire, Frostwire, Napster and iMesh are available to download onto any platform for users to download music, movies and television programmes for no price. The consequence of downloading illegal media is massive, an example of how it is affecting the media industry is that in 1997, 78 million singles were sold in the UK, in 2011, only 8.6 million  were sold, that’s 69.8 million less over the course of 14 years

The consequences if people are caught sharing files through peer to peer applications are massive; you can be given a high priced fine depending on the amount of downloading you may have done, if you are not able to pay the fines you may have your possessions taking away.

Online Gaming

An online game is a game that is played over an Internet network. The way in which online gaming has expanded over the last few years is incredible, its gone from small local networks to the internet and then the obvious growth of the internet making the experience of playing a game online much quicker and more enjoyable for the user.

The idea of online gaming can range from simple text based gaming to complex graphical games to virtual worlds; a great example of a virtual world would be Second Life.

Second Life is a virtual gaming world in which gamers can have a ‘second life’. Users are able to interact with other users over the Internet through their virtual bodies and can explore their second life world. Users, known as residents in the game, are also able to create and trade virtual properties and services with one another. This game, as of 2011, has around 1 million active users, and is available on the majority of platforms including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

There are also lots of online games that are just browser games; sites like miniclip.com offer these types of flash games. It is widely reported that the online gaming market is worth more than 15 billion dollars and the average time spent playing online by gamers is just over 6 hours and 30 minutes weekly.

The benefits of online gaming is that is a fun and safe way for young and old people to interact with each other and play a friendly game, in most cases. The disadvantage to online gaming is that gamers could become to engross in a game, like Second Life that they forget about more important things in real life, there are stories of gamers of Second Life, who do not consider the game to be their second life but actually their first and most important life.

Online Gambling

There are many ways in which people can gamble, through poker, casinos, betting on sports, bingo, lotteries and horse racing to name a few, whether it be small bets or big money bets, it can now be done all through the internet.

During the 1990’s was when online gambling was first introduced to users of the Internet but it was nowhere near the standard of quality that it is now a days.

Online gambling is still in the early stages of its development now and surprisingly is still not yet legal all over the world and may never be legal all over the world as there are laws against it in some countries.

It is estimated that there are around 20,000 online gambling sites for users to visit. Online poker is the most popular way of gambling online and recently it has seen a massive increase in popularity, with Texas Hold’em Poker being the most popular type of poker, as it can be very cheap to be involved in or, people are able to play for real but with pretend money. Social networking sites are the latest sites to be involved with online poker; it has become very popular due to the nature of the games that are free to play in.

Download Services

In ICT there are many different things that can now be downloaded through being connected to the Internet. Every year the list increases as every year lots of new things are either being created or already existing things are being made available to download through the world of the Internet, this is more commonly known as 'File Sharing'.

There have been many different programs that can be downloaded through the Internet giving users the chance to use a service such as P2P, Peer to Peer System, this allows users to share files between all users. NAPSTER is one of the most known programs to offer this service, when it was first made it was an illegal site that mainly offered music but since then it has expanded and is no longer illegal and in fact legal.

SOFTWARE

Software is a collection of data that, together, provide instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it. In contrast to hardware (physical devices), software is intangible, meaning it cannot be touched.  There are many different types of software available to download on the Internet, the software maybe available to download for free or you may have to pay a fee for it. Some of the most known and used pieces of software is the Microsoft Office range. Microsoft Office is a commercial office of related desktop applications available to use on both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. The range, when first introduced in the year of 1989, only included three of the six now available applications, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint, since then the range has increased and now includes Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Outlook/Entourage and Microsoft Access.

All of these products are now available to buy over the Internet making it easier for the consumer to download while also cutting down on useful resources that could be used for other things. By downloading it over the Internet it also eliminates the risk of losing the disk that would hold the software had you bought it physically from a shop.

You can also download 'System Software' over the Internet now as well as 'Application Software'. 'System Software' includes things such as Device Drivers. A device driver is a computer program that allows higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device.  The purpose of a device driver is to simplify programming by acting as translator between a hardware device and the applications or operating systems that use it. Programmers can write the higher-level application code independently to work with the hardware device that is being used.

PATCHES

A patch is software that has been specifically designed to fix problems with a computer program or its supporting data; it also is sometimes used to update a computer program or its supporting data. There are now more patches than ever as companies are finding that when they launch a new piece of software because there is so much going on inside the software, something goes wrong or they have missed something out meaning it does not work correctly meaning they have to send out another update or patch to fix the problem or problems. Recently Apple released a software update for their massively popular products the iPhone and iPad, it was available to every user of an iPod, iPad and iPhone when they connected it to their computer and then iTunes, the update was not an update to fix a problem it was mainly for making the software easier to use on the devices and to install new software for the users to use making it a more enjoyable experience when using the devices.  I personally think updates are very useful as after you have paid the initial price for the product, you do not have to pay for the updates that may follow on from the starting software, by doing this companies can advertise that they continually update software making it top of the range to the software is always the latest and newest it can be, this makes customers feel more incline to buy a product as they know that even a year after they buy the product, the software will still be up to date and top of the range.  

PDF Files

A portable document format, a PDF, is an open standard file. This type of file was created by the Adobe Systems in 1993 and is used for representing documents of application software and hardware and operating systems. A PDF file is a very useful format to use when publishing documents on the Internet for people to download as it has very few restrictions. This type of format can be shared with other users of a computer who may not have the same software installed on their computer, it also can share files who use a different system platform, an example of this would be the creator of the document creating the document on a Windows PC and the person downloading the document from the internet downloading it onto an Apple Mac system.  Along with this advantage, when transferring it from one platform to another or one piece of software to another it will still look the same when on the screen and once it is printed, that means all of the pictures will still be there, the layout will be the same and all the fonts will be the same.

I personally have downloaded many PDF files that I have downloaded for a specific reason; including recently I downloaded a user manual for a video game. This year the people that make FIFA realised that, in previous years, many people did not need the multiple paged user manual that was included in every box when the game was bought, so instead, this year they made an electronic user manual that users could download and print if they wanted to. This saves a lot of paper, which of course helps the environment.

Online Banking

Online banking is becoming a very prominent way of banking in today’s world. Many people use it for many different reasons including setting up direct debits, transferring money from one account to another or simply just checking their personal balance for as many accounts as they have. This generally offers a much easier way to bank than doing it physically, it allows users to do it when ever they like any time of the day, and this makes it easier as they are not restricted to banking during the opening hours of a bank.  

The most common features of online banking are transactional, non transactional and management. The services that are used in the transactional category are performing a transaction such an account to another account transfer, paying of many different bills, applying for a loan, setting up a new account and many others. Examples of this are customers transferring money from a customer’s own transactional account to their savings account in which may enhance the possibilities of interest, also payments to third parties, including bill payments, are made much easier by doing it online as it cuts the hassle.

There are many different banks that offer an online service to make it easier for their customers, including NatWest, Santander and HSBC, but one of the main banking online services is www.egg.com. The reason they are so popular is because they offer many different services which other banking websites do not including their ‘Egg Money Manager’. The ‘Egg Money Manager’ allows users of the service to see the balances for their other online bank and building society accounts alongside their Egg balances, and all of this is available on the Egg website, the fact that it can be your credit and store cards, current account, loan and even your mortgage accounts make the whole service even greater. With just one click, will take you straight to your other banks' websites and you won't need to log in again, this is a massive advantage as it saves a lot of time when trying to deal with more than one account, the only disadvantage would be that with some banks you may be asked to provide additional verification, but even with this it is still a massive time saver.

Although used by millions, people still believe that online banking isn’t safe to use as they believe many things could go wrong such as, being scammed, losing their details or making a mistake causing them to lose money, this is why the majority of banking is still done in the actual bank on high streets. Online banking has become very safe and easy to use over the course of it being around, which is why people are now not so worried about using it, they realise that it is a very quick, easy and safe to use. Many organisations that offer online banking have now introduced a way of making online banking more safe for customers to use; places like egg.com have offered an ‘Egg Guarantee’  that means if any money from an egg account is stolen or taken by fraud the organisation will pay it back into the account it was taken from, this makes customers feel safer when they use such services.

HSBC, in the recent years, have introduced a new, inventive way of making sure that all accounts are secure, the ‘HSBC Secure Key’. It is a device that gives you a random number when you enter your code into the device, you then log onto the internet and onto the HSBC website, which will know that you have used the device and ask you to enter your PIN code and the unique random code that the device had given you. This is a very clever way of enforcing security for the website and ensuring that customers will not feel that it is a risk to use the internet to do their banking.

I personally use this service, as, for me, it is very useful for checking a balance before I buy something online, and I know that everyone in my immediate family also use this service. My sister in fact uses the HSBC secure key as when she was first told about online banking she didn’t feel that it would be secure and her details would be stolen and from that her hard earned money. But once the new HSBC Secure Key was introduced she knew that it would be okay and would be safe to use.