Assignment 2 - Task 1

 What Are The Positive Impacts Of IT?

IT has impacted our everyday lives in many different and useful ways, for the normal person IT is used everyday to help make things more efficient and easier to understand, for companies IT is used to help earn them a higher income and make customer usability a more enjoyable and less frustrating experience. For a normal person IT is used in many different things that we take for granted nowadays, IT is used when working or studying online, when IT is used this way it can help your workflow and communication in a group, it can also be easier as you have many tools available to you all in one place. You use IT when shopping online as before without IT you would have to go out looking for what you want to buy, whereas now with IT you can just load up Amazon, for example, and search for what you want and it will be delivered to you in a very short amount of time. 

IT is used when looking at entertainment online or when playing multiplayer games, without IT you would have to wait for what you want to watch to come on the TV, however with online streaming services you don't have to wait and you can just watch whatever you want, however with a cost. The same with gaming, before IT you had to play by yourself or use LAN, which had a very limited range, but now with IT integrated into everything we do you can play with anyone anywhere. IT is also used in healthcare and medicine, to figure out how to kill virus' and diseases scientists around the globe have to communicate and share their findings between each other, this is much more effective than the original way which was writing all of their research in journals, this is much slower and is susceptible to damage, however now scientists write all of their research in articles that can be saved to the cloud and are able to be sent back and forth between readers and are virtually impossible to lose and completely dispose of. 

IT is used a bit different in business but is just as useful for the company as it is for the customer, businesses can use IT in order to create websites in order to sell you things and find out you like to buy and what you may want to buy next, for example say a customer wanted to buy a new TV, before IT they would have to go through loads of steps to get it and transport it to wherever they wanted, however with IT they can just go on the businesses website and choose where and when to have the TV delivered, this allows the company to have more control on what your experience was like when buying with them. Another thing businesses like to do now is provide their employees with all of the equipment for them to work effectively anywhere in the world, so that if a employee calls in sick they may still be expected to work as they have the technology to do so. Another way businesses use IT is in questionnaires and online surveys to receive customer feedback and therefore improve the product they are trying to sell, this was able to be done before IT however it was a lot less effective and had less people leaving reviews and took a lot longer to read through.

What Is "Big Data" And How Is It Used?

Big Data has had a large impact on not only businesses but also the individual, Big Data is a large collected mass of data that can be processed to show reoccurring patterns, themes and trends. For example "Amazon" collect your data when you use their website, say you put an lawnmower in your basket and buy it they would collect that data and compile it with other people who have also bought that, then it would suggest you items that those people then went on to purchase or look at. Big Data can is also used in GPS software, Google's "Google Maps" uses people's phones location in order to see what the traffic is like, if the software see's bunch of phones moving slowly and are really close together it will guess that there is traffic and warn people who are further back that there is traffic.

What Are The Negative Impacts Of IT?

IT has had many positive effects on the average person but it has also has many negative effects on your everyday life, now due to online shopping companies know a lot about you and almost everything that you do during your day to day life, companies also know your credit/debit card details, your address and what your login details are, leaving them susceptible to digital attacks. Digital attacks are used to expose, alter, destroy or steal information in order to profit, after this they would then have the ability to use your credit/debit card to buy whatever or do whatever with your money until you eventually find out and change your details.

With technology progressing the way it is soon most traditional jobs such as construction, plumbing, waiting (serving food) or even being a janitor will be taken over by autonomous machines. The reason that employers may want to change to AI automation over a normal human worker is quite simple, AI can be cheaper and more effective at it's job, although it may cost quite a bit at the time of purchase it wont cost very much to keep it running. AI is much better at working out equations and doing logical thinking than a person, so an AI would be better than a person at being a banker, they will also be able to replace receptionists, soldiers, taxi drivers and many, many more.

Another negative of IT is the cost, computers can be very expensive so before buying you have to look at all the tech news and see if what you are looking for is worth it or if it's just going to be overtaken by something new and better almost immediately, but you also want to get something that is pretty good as you don't want to have to upgrade all of the time as that could end up costing more than  what the original best thing was. The problem with computers is that they are constantly getting better and better and although you may have the most high end computer money can buy right now in a couple months your computer will be outdated, so the best thing to do is choose components good for what you want to do and good for the price and only upgrade when a really, really good deal comes out or when it is needed. However, depending on what you are doing on the computer you will have to pay for different software's to do what you need doing and this can end up being a very large cost overtime.

IT has had an effect on everything in the world and businesses have been quick to use it to their advantage, however businesses use IT so much and so often that now they would not be able to function without it. An example would be getting new stock/items, normally when using IT they would look at what the possible demand for the item is by viewing the data, however without IT they would just have to effectively make a guess and just hope they make a profit, this is not a safe business venture as it may result in a loss for the company. Another reason many companies may not be able to function is because when you buy something in store they scan the item and that updates the stock to say that they have sold one, however, without IT how much stock they have would have to be recorded on a notebook requiring a person to record each thing that has been sold, so the stock may get messed up a lot easier than with IT.