Unit 9: The Impact of Computing

Technology breakthrough in recent years has impacted business in numbers of different ways. New hardware and programs are being made every day, which helped the organisations to increase their functionality, improved their security and communication processes.

Let's start with how massively mobile development has changed the industries. Back in the day, it would take days to communicate as people didn't have the means to contact someone instantly. This is changed when IBM released the first-ever smartphone in 1994, which was known as the Simon Personal Communicator (SPC). The SPC had several features such as a touch screen which was very rare back in 1994. It also allowed users to send and receive both mails and faxes. SPC came with an address book, calendar and a native appointment scheduler. It even featured standard and predictive stylus input screen keyboards. This innovative breakthrough in technology has made a big impact on the world as 99% of the people in the world have access to phones which they can use to communicate instantly. Industries can send alert to their employees about work. Another big breakthrough was in 2001 when smartphone started having access to 3G network; this means people would have internet access anywhere in the world, which allowed them to have world's database of information within seconds. As the technology developed for mobile, security increased to which allowed people to secure their devices via fingerprint or eye scanner. With how fast the mobile development has been, it also affected the application development. Nowadays, we have applications that allow us to send payment instantly to friends, family or vendor. Organisation like amazon, eBay etc. has used this opportunity to release their apps on mobile that allowed customers to access the store anywhere in the world with the help of internet.
These development has also helped create competition between industries which further boosted with the development as we have different mobile companies like Apple, Samsung etc. All of em are releasing new devices to stay ahead of each other in this never-ending competition.
Next, the development of software has allowed the organisation to provide increases usability for the users and provide new job opportunities for the people. It also allowed the business to make their profession easier to understand. With the help of software, it is now possible to get the task done in little time compared to the old age when everything must be done manually which took a lot of effort and time just to get one task done. A good example is using word processor which has a lot of features that allows the organisation to set certain parts of text as different headings and sub-headings, this allows them to set out their report or text they are writing clearly, making it easier for them to write and layout clearly, while at the same time making it easier for the reader to follow and find specific pieces of information. Even a small feature like this is useful for a business as it allows them to more efficiently layout reports that may be essential to the day to day operations by saving them time as they do not have to design the layout manually individually. Some other examples do you need to collaborate with someone who can't meet in person? Use a webcam and Skype, and they can be brought right into your office. Do you need more space for documents? Scan all your documents onto your computer system and recycle all the paper. New technology developments have made the workplace better than ever. Modern technology and future technology endeavours are making employers, and employees lives more accessible day by day.
With the help of technology developments, organisation can now allow employee to work from home. This has been proven very effective, according to the research. Working from home allowed employee to work while looking after their family or other matters at the same time. However, at the same time, this made the employee feels detached from the company as they're are unaware of the stuff happening in the office

IMPACT OF IMPLEMENT A NEW SYSTEM:
As hardware's are being developed and becomes, more powerful, more accurate simulations can produced that will benefit the business in the long run. Having more powerful hardware means more sophisticated software can be run, allowing for more accurate business predictions, e.g. what the most popular game genre will be in 5 years' time, this allows the business to plan, steadily increasing profits as market gaps can be filled before other companies fill them. Implantation of a new computer for organisation can be tough as every business has its own unique needs. Implementation of the right system in organisation has massive Impact as it allows them to improve the customer services, develop competitive advantage and it also increases employee morale as having fast hardware will allow the employee to get their work done at a quicker pace.  However, there are some risks, too, so businesses must be prepared for it. If the implementation is done poorly, your business could lose quite a bit of money and customers. IAG Consulting reported that only 32% of all new computer systems projects are completed successfully. This pretty much means that a business owner needs to have a game plan when it comes to a new system.
Failing to take time to plan out the implementation or failing to take the time to train your employees on the new system could have a very negative impact on your business. Keep this in mind when you plan to introduce a new system to your staff. Not everyone is going to know how to use the system right away. Owners and managers must set time aside to train their staff accordingly.
Hardware needs to be updated in order to run the best software at optimal performance, having the most powerful hardware means the most high ends software can be run. However, this would prove extremely expensive if you were to update every single computer, every time a new, more powerful bit of hardware was released, so this may not prove practical and too expensive for a business to do.

Implementing a new computer in organisation is tough as they're a lot of things to be considered when implementing a new system in organisations—especially threat to the new system that can put the whole company data at risk. Companies must make sure the new system is secured and capable of protecting the data. They also must set up accounts for their employees and make sure correct permissions settings are setup. New system means companies must add new policies and procedures for staff, setup system users, install software-based protections, anti-malware, user authentication, file/folder access and user privileges.  Policies and rules are instituted to serve as a form of guide. In organisations, it's important to make sure that they are abreast with the rules and regulations in an organisation. The advantage of this is, employees must make sure to follow the rules for the security sake as not having proper policy might end up breaching security.
Organisation must train the employee on how to use these new systems as not having knowledge on the new system might put the whole organisation at massive risk as it also increases the chances of security breaches. Failing to do so, organisation might end up facing huge consequences. With the wide adoption of the internet nowadays, people and some organisations use the internet to sell their products to other customers online. If there is a data breach on such an organisation, they would be facing financial problems because customers would not be able to make purchases online, and that would result in an hourly loss of revenue. Breaches such as this could ruin the reputation of an organisation because customers would not feel safe dealing with the organisation. There is a huge consequence that organisations face when they are faced with such data breaches because, they fail to keep customer's data safe and, in the event that they deliberately give out information to hackers, they are like to face some legal consequences.
This will also impact company reputation as data breaches could make an impact on organisation buy making their reputation look bad. When an organisation is faced with a bad reputation, they tend to lose their loyal customers and more importantly, they're hit with financial losses. In addition, customers would not like to engage the services of organisations that have bad reputations.

Emerging technologies

Technology and computing have developed to a point where emerging technologies are popping up at a rapid rate. New devices are being released every day that have new technologies every time. Internet of things or IoT refers to the ever-growing network of physical devices that are connected using networks with each of them possessing their own IP addresses to make the connections possible. It's the concept of connecting every and any device being connected to the internet, which allows these devices to exchange data.  Machines like heating systems, fridges, and washing machines are all devices or systems that are often found in the common household. Naturally, these devices didn't require any internet or form of connectivity in the start, however with the emerging of technologies, smart fridges and tv are being released that have become more popular. These smart devices require the internet as they have a ton of features which can't be accessed without internet. With emerging technologies, computing anywhere at any time is possible for both the general public as well as businesses. The opportunities of technology like this will allow everyone to be connected consistently, allowing them access to the internet and knowledge whenever they need. This is a benefit to everyone as it means the unlimited knowledge available on the internet is available all the time.  However, due to the risk of technology like this, there are many challenges which the idea of ubiquitous computing technologies must fight against. These can include sceptics who don't always agree with the idea of being connected.  This is fed by the idea of hackers and other negative effects of computing.
With the emerging of technologies, manual labour has slowly been replaced by automatic technology. Whether people like it or not, automatic labour has proven to be far more effective compared to manual labour. Some of these companies that have moved to automated systems are:
•McDonald: introducing self-services machines for taking orders
•PepsiCo: using Artificial intelligence and machines for packing and delivering of bottles, chips etc
•Mars, nestle and other similar companies: automated machines for confectionery mixture, wrapping and packaging
These companies are known to replace natural process like taking orders etc. with automated systems. This sometimes backfires as people might have complained or had questions that can only be answered by a human employee.
PepsiCo has spent 2.5 billion dollars to restructure the company to replace most of the labour with automated labour which resulted in more productivity, but they had to lay off more than 250,000 of their employees. While this has increased PepsiCo annual profit, their public rep was ruined. However, this can create more jobs in different sectors as those who were laid off could obtain the skills which will help with the automated machines, for example repairing them or operating them require certain knowledge which they can learn.

This shows it's the era of technologies as everyday new technology pop up which replaces human jobs. Automation in technology helped business in reducing errors while increasing efficiency as computers have more processing power and can get more task done quickly as compared to humans.
Emerging of technology also helped other industries to evolve, such as the gaming industry. As technologies evolve, new doors get opened in gaming industries which makes it even more realistic and introduce new genres. Today we have technologies like Virtual Reality (VR), AR, etc and different gaming platform. Over these past couples of years, gaming industries has rapidly changed into ways we couldn't imagine. Current and new technology has helped gaming industries in a lot of ways from platform to developing games. We have VR nowadays, also known as Virtual reality. It's one of the most breath-taking technology emerged into video game industries. This doesn't only open doors to a lot of different opportunities but also benefit health as a gamer is required to move around their body instead of sitting down a chair with remote controller in their hand. Gaming already has a lot of benefits, but now with VR, it helps players with improving their skills. People can use VR to control their character, which helps them improve them accurately in real life. This helps them with increasing hand-eye coordination needed to control high tech machines and makes their hands calmer. However, VR is relatively new and costly. It could be some time before developers and users could take full benefit of VR.
Another example is mobile; mobile used to be very simple, only used for calling and texting but with emerging of technology we have smartphones. Smartphones have network connections and other technologies which also benefits other industries and the general public. This has introduced new jobs and further developments as nowadays, even gaming on mobile is popular. This helps the developer to develop their apps on other platforms. The developers of mobile games focus on developing games with online compatibility capabilities. Subsequently, the games support multiplayer option. For example, Sniper 3D is a mobile game that can be played online and supports multiple players as well. Additionally, the models of the current mobiles are different from those of the past; mobile phones have high processing speeds, big storage space, and high display quality. As such, it is possible for mobile gamers to enjoy games online without encountering inconsistencies.
This just shows how much technology has involved and how the internet of things has been implanted in most technologies.


Big data, data warehousing and data mining

For a long period of time, scarcity of data was a major problem. With the advent of computing technology and internet, that is no longer the case. Huge volume of data is being generated every second across the globe. The cell phone you have to huge industrial alternators are producing data at an unprecedented rate. This has led to the creation of a new field, Big Data. Big data can be defined as the use and analysis of large amounts of data to extract useful information.

Big Data is a technology field which is made up of three properties known as volume, Velocity and variety. Volume helps find out in finding the size of the data whereas Velocity helps us find the speed at which data is coming in, and variety helps us determined what type of data it is

• Volume - Volume refers to the quantity of data generated. There are different definitions that determines whether a dataset can be considered big data or not. As a thumb rule, one could say that, when the volume of data becomes too cumbersome to be handled by most spreadsheet applications, the data can be considered big data. 

• Variety - The variety characteristic gives a marker on how complex the data is. Variety can be defined as the diversity of data. The variety of data can be determined by various factors of the data is mainly classified according to, Format, Structure, Unstructured data, Natural language, Media, Complex systems.

• Velocity - The speed at which the data is generated and processed.
• Variability - Inconsistency of the data set can delay and interfere with processes to handle and manage it
• Veracity - The data quality of captured data can vary greatly, affecting the accurate analysis.

Big Data can be used for every kind of information, which includes financial transactions, social profiles and other kinds of information from sensor/machine-specific data. It also accepts all types of formats, relational data, Structure data, and unstructured data including emails, text documents, video/audio, stock ticker data and banking transaction. Companies can use Big Data to compare a large amount of valuable data which can help them make a wise decision that'll greatly improve their business. They can find out how to get more customers, more revenue, more profitability by using big data. Big data is subject-oriented as it can process any kind of data from all different type of sources. It can also help in providing precise analysis of data. Big Data has lot of approach to data that is already identified, especially time period. Archive with date and time are the best approach to identify loaded data, but it also works with streaming data which means big data isn't always holding historical data. Another benefit of big data that it never erases previous data when new data is added to it. Big data store files which is represented as a table

Data warehouse

A data warehouse is the computing system which is used for reporting and storing of large amounts of data. The data to be stored can be from a single source or multiple sources. The term generally implies data is collected from a variety of heterogenous sources. Two main methods are used for integrating heterogenous sources of data.

• Query-driven approach: In this approach various wrappers are used to integrate data from multiple sources. The wrappers are applied on top of the different kinds of data and is integrated using mediators. In simple terms, there is a dictionary that connects different data sets speaking different languages. In this case, the data integration happens after storing.

• Update driven approach: As opposed to query driven approach, here the data is integrated before storing. This is a more efficient model and is widely used today.

Since there might be requirement of same data to be accessed across different location, cloud-based model of data warehousing is widely prevalent. According to the requirements and cost constraints cloud infrastructure can be built or existing infrastructure can be used. 

Data mining

Data mining is the core process where useful information and insights from the data. Statistical techniques are employed with machine learning to make the process scalable to large data sets. Data mining is utilized in a large manner in the industry for Market analysis, Fraud detection, Customer retention, Production control, Scientific exploration.

The results of data mining techniques can’t be accessed by simple analysis. Complex statistical models are applied on the data set to arrive at the results. Complex machine learning algorithms are used for determining the statistical models which works best for a data set. All of that happens without much interference when set up properly. Data mining techniques are utilized according to the business understanding of the problem. Various data mining techniques utilized are:

•Classification: Here the primary motive is to classify the data available. In a large data set, it is much difficult to classify than one might perceive. Data mining techniques makes it easier for a large data set.

•Clustering: These techniques are used to determine data that are similar to each other. These techniques can be used to determine the similarities and differences between data.

•Regression: Regression is utilized to determine the relationship between various variable. With the help of regression, we can determine the probabilities of certain outcome provided one or more variable are available.

•Association rules: This helps to find hidden patterns in a data set. This technique helps in determining what variable are related and how the relationship works.

• Outer detection: This technique is employed to detect the outliers in data. The outliers are important as they project unexpected behaviour in the data. This technique is widely used for fraud detection.

• Sequential patterns: It helps to identify trends in data for a certain time period. The time is the significant portion here as the trends observed will be different for different time periods.

• Predictions: Prediction is the ultimate goal of data mining techniques. As one could imagine, making prediction is a very complex task due to all the uncertainties there could be. For prediction, a combination of all the other techniques are employed.

Ethical issues

As with anything there is two sides to this story. As much as there is good outcomes with anything, there will be opportunities for it to be utilized for nefarious purposes. It is very evident from the current state of the internet. On internet the bad actors can utilize the infrastructure for acts that are personal in nature and for acts that are of a larger and wider scale.

Bad individual outcomes: Pornography is a prevalent section of the internet. Even worse is the existence of revenge pornography. It is a vice that destroys a person psychologically, socially, and even physically. It is quite difficult to rationally quantify the ramifications of the same.

Another significant bad behaviour on the internet is the cyberbullying and trolling. Cyberbullying is a form of pervasive behaviour in which an individual is attacked over the internet. Many stories of cyberbullying and its effect on individuals have surfaced in the recent years. Trolling hinders a civil discussion in the cyberspace. It is a relatively lesser vice. The frequency and intentions of trolling much determines the negative effects of trolling.

Bad large-scale outcomes: Piracy is a big threat in this regard. Movies, music and other content are widely pirated through the medium of internet. This hinders the monetization ability of the content creators, which in turn reduces the drive to create more content. This is a vicious cycle that keeps on spiralling.

Darknet is part of internet where all the forbidden dealing are done. It is part of internet that normal folk should stay away as there is all type of awful stuff going on. You can even find drugs, hitmen, etc which is illegal normally. Accessing darkNet deems to be forbidden and authorities usually monitor people who try to access darknet

Terrorism also has found use with internet. Terrorists organisations use the medium of internet to spread their ideology and recruit, communicate with members. We have seen the examples in recent times when terrorist activities where live streamed over social media platforms.

Internet has also been used to spread propaganda and meddle in the election. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is a blatant example of this.

The final word is any technology with great potential can be utilized for equally larger negative outcomes. All technology must be used with caution, be it internet, be it Big Data.


refs:
https://www.educba.com/big-data-vs-data-warehouse/
https://simpletexting.com/where-have-we-come-since-the-first-smartphone/
http://zerosxones.blogspot.com/2017/05/as-internet-law-and-policy-expertrobert.html
http://buzz2fone.com/how-marketing-technology-impact-business-success/