Entertainment in the Information Age

The entertainment industry has been greatly affected by the Information Age, long gone are the days of board games and jigsaws; games consoles and handheld devices are the future of entertainment. The latest devices can vary in size and function from the biggest 60 inch plasma 3D TV’s to the smallest handheld devices.

Games

There are many different platforms that offer the consumer gaming, the most popular are the devices which are solely dedicated to gaming such as PlayStation (Sony), Xbox (Microsoft) and Nintendo these three different consoles dominate the gaming world and I can’t see them being challenged any time soon. People use different consoles depending on what they plan to use them for. For example, the Nintendo Wii is great for any age and everyone can get involved where as consoles such as Playstation’s and Xbox’s are targeted more at serious gamers. Different types of games also dominate the entertainment industry. Multiplayer games are usually the most popular such as Call of Duty, FIFA and Guitar Hero – these games give gaming a whole new dimension of playing with or against your friends. All these consoles and games offer online options but I believe that this ruins the meaning of the game; I think they are put to better use playing against friends or family. Games have now found their way onto handheld devices such as Apple’s iPhones and iPads these games are usually simple and easy to play, but extremely addictive! These games give people gaming on the move and are great for long or short distance travelling. I believe that games are rapidly changing for the better.

Music

Music, much liking gaming, has come on leaps and bounds in the 20^th Century. The introduction of Apple’s iPod was the first real leap forward from the days of tapes and CD’s. Music is one of the most popular sources of entertainment – before the introduction of the iPod handheld CD players could be carried around with a maximum of around 10-15 songs on them. This was all changed with the introduction of the iPod on the 23^rd October 2001 and since then they have sold over 300’000’000 iPod’s worldwide. You can now get iPod’s with a memory capacity of up to 160GB which can hold 40’000 songs!

Truly portable music players has transformed the way we listen to music, in my opinion the for the better! It is rare now-a-days for someone to sit down and just listen to music, in such a dynamic world everything must be done on the move. I store all of my music on my iPhone and I really couldn’t imagine carrying around a portable CD player and a case of CD’s. I cannot think of any disadvantages of the iPod or any portable music players; however they are quite desirable items so they could be targets for stealing.

Digital Cameras

Digital Cameras and photography in general properly wouldn’t be the top of most people’s lists if you ask them want they find entertaining, but I believe that cameras offer entertainment that no other devices can. The majority of people now carry cameras on them most of the time; whether it be a camera phone or a high detail digital SLR. Digital cameras have a huge advantage over disposals cameras – they allow you to view the photo you have taken as soon as you’ve taken it on a screen (usually about 3 inches). As digital cameras have advanced as have the editing software that allows you to re-touch and improve your photos.

eBooks

Books have always been and always will be a good source of entertainment but they are on the decline with the release and sales of ‘e-books’. eBooks are handheld devices which can hold hundreds and even thousands of books in a device about the same size as a small paperback. Kindle from Amazon and the iPad from Apple are seen as the biggest players in the eBook industry. My family own a kindle and I find it much better than the iPad, I think the biggest advantage it has over the iPad is the ‘e-ink’ feature. e-Ink doesn’t require a backlight which means it is easier on the readers eyes and has a longer battery life. Another advantage the Kindle has over the iPad is the price. The bog standard Kindle costs only £89 which is an absolute bargain for the product and services it provides. The iPad, although it offers many other uses other than reading is way to over prices at £399 and the reader will start to develop a headache after around 30 minutes of use.

Education in the Information Age

Education within the ‘Information Age’ has effected how students and teachers work within schools, colleges, universities and any other place of learning. Technologies effects the way in which we, the students, learn. It has also affected the styles of teaching with more variety in lessons due to the advancements in technology.

Obviously the level of technology which is used varies depending on the level of education. Within primary schools students are taught the basic ICT skills, such as using Microsoft Software such as Word and PowerPoint. Primary schools in this day and age now have interactive whiteboards, which I will come to later. Teaching progresses when students go to secondary school, they start to learn more in dept about the different uses of computers  and just how useful some technology can be.

Student Information Management System or SIMS for short is used for capturing and handling student data. SIMS is also used for a variety of tasks such as; holding personal details, monitoring attendance, taking the register and student and teacher timetables. Before the advancement of technology all of these tasks would require hundreds of piece of paper for an average sized secondary school, this would take up valuable time that could be used for something else. Another advantage of SIMS is that it allows the operator to have all the information on pupils in one place this allows the school to create an individual programme on each student in the school – this can be useful in seeing if the students has any past history at the school which could be seen as a problem. Again SIMS helps saves time and is much quicker than any paper records would be. Although in my opinion the positive’s of SIMS largely out weight the negatives there are negatives present. Like most electronic systems they are prone to crash this means that records could possibly be lost, this however is not a problem with paper records.

Personal Experience

I have had firsthand experience with paper systems and the SIMS system. Obviously my experience with paper registers was in primary school at a very young age but I don’t think they are a very good idea with paper sheets beings very easy to lose. SIMS, however, is a much more organised system with no records being lost, in my experience, and it is a fast and easy to use system.

The systems that are used, such as SIMS, are not the only things that have been affected by the ‘information age’. The equipment we use now, such as interactive whiteboards and large computer suites are now available in every school I know. Firstly, interactive white boards allow the teacher to show things such as PowerPoint Presentations on large screens so everyone in the room can view them.  However, in my opinion, the biggest advantage of having interactive whiteboards is, obviously, the interaction they provide the students. These whiteboards allows the students to play games and simple games with links to the topic they are learning about, which there for enhances their learning.

Computer Suites offer a new dimension for teachers to use. Computer Suites can be used for any subjects, not just ICT; with the new software they can be used for anything from academic maths and sciences to creative Art and Textiles. There are downsides to this technology. The interactive whiteboards especially are expensive to install and if these systems go wrong then they can be quite hard to fix.

More recently (in the last few years) there have been talks about supplying students in education with laptops that they would be able to have as a portable ‘workstation’. Some schools already have this system in place and supply the students with laptops for lesson. This could be a benefit because the students would be able to take their work with them anywhere they go in a laptop instead of carrying around lots of books. However some schools discourage their students staring at screens none stop all day, this could be seen as a downfall.

Another way in which the information age has changed education is the subject’s that are taught. ICT is now taught in schools all over the UK and is an important part of the curriculum. ICT is seen as a useful skill to acquire due to world outside school become ever more reliant on technology. ICT skills are looked for by employers and are useful in a variety of situation. Many people argue that ICT isn’t as important as people make it out to be and students begin to become dependent on computers. Some student’s handwriting starts to deteriorate as they become ever reliant on computers this can become a serious problem in exams when their writing becomes un-readable. It is also believed that writing notes by hand makes them easier to learn than when typing them.

Most textbooks now come with a compact disc which allows students to view all the text within the book from a computer – this comes in handy when partnered with a interactive whiteboards. This is a good system to use because it allows the school to have 1 compact disk for each class this is a good alternative to every student having a textbook of their own.  As previously mentioned I believe that interaction in lessons make learning a lot easier. However to access these tools you have to have access to a computer.

Employment

 Technology is now considered to be a necessity in today’s society. However, although computing systems can increase the effectiveness of companies their employees need to be trained and taught how to use these in order for them to be effective.

What are the disadvantages of Employment in the Information Age?

·          Unemployment rates are increasing due to computers being developed to perform a job more effective and quicker than humans can.

·          Computers lack the ‘human instinct’. When a computer system is faced with a decision making situation they will not be able to deal with it, unless they have been programmed to do so.

·          Computers can be prone to power cuts.

·          Companies must invest heavily in computing systems.

·          The use of computers can reduce the amount of human interaction with the company – this can result in the company losing customers.

What are the advantages of Employment in the Information Age?

·          The obvious advantage of computer systems is that the efficiency or the job in hand is improved – almost instant success of the task can be achieved.

·          More consistent standard – this is due to computers being programmed to do the job, unlike humans they won’t make mistakes due to a slip of the finger or being tired.

·          Computers, although they may cost in the first place, they do not need to be paid hourly or monthly unlike humans – so cost in the long run is cheaper.

·          Companies can use computers to advertise to specific people who take interest in similar things to their companies on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Employment in the industry

Computing can be used in the industry for a variety of different tasks. Computing Numerical Control or CNC ensure that the computers and machine deliver and complete tasks to high standards. The CNC is used most frequently in the textile industry. As machines are becoming more able it has a huge impact on the employment/unemployment figures as previously mentioned computers are cheaper, quicker and much more efficient.

CIM is another form of computing found in industries. CIM allows the whole production line of a company to be controlled by machines – this result in the process being less at risk to mistakes or faults.

Online Employment Industry

There are many sites online now which can be used to help people find jobs, with unemployment being at an all-time high, this is a necessity. Large shops, especially supermarkets uses computer systems to check the stock and control online shopping within the store; in the long run this is a quick, efficient and reasonably cheap alternative to employing staff to do it.

Personal Experience:

In Sainsbury’s small hand held scanners are available when entering the store.  This means that customers can scan their own items and reduce the time taken at the till – this again increase efficiency and speed. In business such as Fujitsu large documents can be store on systems such as Microsoft Excel or Word – this saves space and they can also be backed up making them much more reliable than hard copies.

Google AdSense

AdSense allows website owners to register their site to allow different forms of advertisement. It is seen as the most popular advertising application available online.

Different types of AdSense:

·          Feeds: Inserting images into a feed. If a user was to click on the image shown they would be redirected to the advertiser’s website.

·          Search: Allows website’s to have Google search boxes on their websites.

·          Mobile content: Generates earning from their mobile website using Google advertisements

·          Videos: Placing ads on sites such as YouTube.

'Digital Revolution'

This is sometimes referred to as the ‘third industrial revolution’. The Digital Revolution is the change from analog to digital technology which has been going on from the 1980s to the present day. The key to this revolution is the mass production and widespread use of digital devices such as computers, mobile phones etc.