It is hard to imagine the modern world without information technology. At home, at work, and at play, mobile phones, e-mails and computers have become part of daily life. Computer is the most important thing in our lives. Some people say that they have never used a computer, but they probably use computers every day – they just do not realize it. There are computers in so many things: cars, televisions, radios, washing machines.
The word ‘computer’ used to mean a person, not a machine. In the nineteenth century, the people who did the calculations and wrote the books were called computers. Nowadays, software programmers have even ‘taught’ computers to do many different things which need imagination, e.g. write music, play chess.
The rapid development of modern technology has brought us unprecedented changes in the world. Modern technology makes life convenient. It changed our lifestyle and the way we live. With modern technology we can work harder, longer and we can carry on working when we get home.
The Internet is a great way for people all over the world to share their information and ideas. Before the Internet, information about the world came from places like newspapers, TV programs and books. The companies that made the newspapers, books and programs controlled the information that people could get. Of course, those companies are still very powerful, but the Internet is getting more and more powerful and nobody controls it. People can find information for themselves from places all over the world. The same is true for music. If you are a band and want to make and sell music, you do not need a music company. You can put the music on your own website and people can pay to copy it. Millions of people around the world use the Internet to give information about themselves and to read about other people and make friends. They do this on websites like MySpace. Most information on the Internet is free. For many people the first place to look through is the Wikipedia website.
The Internet is still young and it is still growing fast. It has already changed our world in a lot of different ways, and the changes will continue. Although the Internet can make problems in some ways, it can also bring people around the world closer together and make them more powerful. Millions of people make business using the Internet.
Today, you can make calls and send texts with the help of mobile phones. You can do a lot of other things with mobile phones too. Nearly all phones now have a camera, and you can take pictures, listen to music, play computer games and go on the Internet. Modern phones are small and beautiful – and for many people, it’s important to have the newest and best one. Mobile phones have changed the lives of people all over the world. In the past, you could only phone friends and family when they were at home, but now they can be in any place when you speak to them. Many people who travel alone feel safer with a mobile phone.
Mobile phones can also help the police to fight crime. Every time somebody makes a call on a mobile phone, the phone company keeps information about the time and place of the call. The police can sometimes get this information about calls from the phone companies if it helps them with a serious crime.
Still there are some problems with mobile phones too. Some people are worried that phones have a bad influence on people’s health and they are unhappy that more and more young children are using them. Mobile phones also make the roads more dangerous, because people use them while they are driving.
A lot of computer scientists are working now on Artificial Intelligence. This is software which makes computers think more like humans. There are still many things which are very easy for humans but very difficult for computers: for example, understanding language. Some computers can understand words when a person speaks, but they cannot really have a conversation. But soon we will probably be able to talk to a computer in the same way that we talk to a friend.
Computer scientists are also trying to build computers which can see. It is easy to make a computer with ‘eyes’, but very difficult for the computer to understand what it sees.
At the moment, scientists are building the first quantum computers. In the future, these will be much faster and more powerful than any computer that we have now. Or perhaps a different kind of computer will appear before then. That is why it is difficult to make predictions about the future of computing: the future is often closer than you think it is.