Monday, 21 September 2015

Computers & Technology – Digital Design Essay


Introduction About Me 


y name is Federica  and I study in Emirates International School, and I am part of the digital design class. I have created this blog to tell and show you what I do in my class, I am very interested in IT and Digital Design so I am looking forward to learning new things this year. This term I will be looking at 3D Printing - Design and Modelling, which sounds really interesting and I very excited to improve my knowledge on IT.  




Digital Design Article - Computers which have failed in the years 


Computers and technology have developed through the past years. They have changed how human-kind acts, thinks and does things. In this essay I’m going to tell you why computers have changed people’s lives as well as why they sometimes don’t work the way you want them to.
A lot of articles about computer failure came up when I searched them up on Google but one caught my eye; ‘Flights disrupted after computer failure at UK air traffic control center’. The computer failure that happened on the 12th December 2014 had affected tens of thousands of people who had been stuck in the airport for hours without going anywhere. The problem was caused by a technical fault in the flight data system and was reported by the National Air Traffic Services. In addition to the workers trying to figure out why there had been a problem, the government also intervened and stated that ‘the disruption was ‘unacceptable’ and demanded a ‘full explanation’ of what had gone wrong’.

The glitch had caused problems at airports all around the country. Some of the problems included: delays at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, 84 flights were cancelled at Heathrow and delays were under an hour.  At Heathrow, 84 flights out of 1300 flights were cancelled, at London City there had been cancellations and delays, at Bristol there were many delays but no cancellations and at Glasgow there had been some delays to arrivals and departures. Those are just some of the complications that happened because of the computer failure. Some of planes had to circle around for hours before they could safely land. The Nats (National Air Traffic Services) stated that an investigation had been carried out to find out the reason of the glitch; the managing director Martin Rolfe identified both a computer hack and a power outage as possible causes. Even though there was an investigation going on, once the air traffic control has a problem nothing is allowed to take off because it could cause another problem. As a result of the problem the passengers were very annoyed, angry and upset, since some of them had to stay the night in the airport and a lot of them missed their flights and could not reach their destination on time as I previously wrote.

There are a lot of advantages of using computers, well to start off it just makes life so much easier. What I mean with that is that it saves time and effort to finish/complete a task, before computers people wrote essays or just simple notes of what they had to do for the day on paper now thanks to technology and computers we take simple seconds to type it up and that’s done, you don’t waste paper and any unnecessary time that you might need to do other things. Another reason why computers are great and help us in everyday life is that people use computers to pay bills, managing home budgets or just having a break and watching a movie, listening to music or playing computer games. Also a lot of organizations such as banks use computers to keep track of accounts and managing financial dealings. Many of these banks provide the facility of online paying. Also today you can just switch on your computer and open an application such as Skype or Facetime and in a blink of an eye you can talk to your friend that lives on the other side of the planet. Or other social media like Facebook or Twitter where you can just open up the computer and see what is happening around the world. Computers are also an educational tool because students have access to any information on the internet making research and doing projects much easier for them.

Even though there are quite a lot of advantages, with every advantage comes a disadvantage. As it shows in the research I’ve done and the article that I have written about, computers don’t always work the way you want them too and have created some problems in the society. First of all many people use the computers in the wrong way or without a positive purpose, e.g. they play games and chat in the wrong time when for example they are doing homework. This is wasting precious time and energy and can cause stress. Unfortunately the young generation, including myself, spend more time more time on social media websites like Facebook, Instagram etc. or texting friends while you should be doing homework or be sleeping which is bad for both studies and health. Data or important importation is not always safe and sometimes hackers hack and steal this information, this can cause serious and dangerous problems for the data security. This brings me on the topic of privacy violation, so if people put up information about them or pictures that they don’t want to be put but still post them anyone can see it even if you delete it, someone has still seen it. Since computers store important details, for example private pictures or simply passwords for accessing things, if the information is not protected properly then it can be violated and hacked and can end up in the wrong hands. Using computers constantly can result into injuries or disorders of hands, wrists, elbows, eyes, necks and back. That’s why it is recommended to take few minute breaks if you’ve been on your computer for 30 minutes or so.

To conclude I think that, not only computers but technology itself has improved the way humans think and act, it has be us become more aware of things as well as made us become more open minded about the world around us. Technology has made things possible that we didn’t think were possible before e.g. by simply opening your devices you can soon see what is going on around the world. To the point, basically they do a lot of the work that we don’t want to do. On the other hand, as I found out, computers are not always on your side. Since they are machines, they can easily break, cause problems and lose important data – that’s why it is often told to have an extra copy of files just in case some crash or get deleted. Finally I truly think that computers have changed and had a massive impact on the society and the world we know today, and I’m sure that technology is going to keep progressing and developing; who knows what they will create next.





 References:
BBC (2014) BBC: News: UK - Flights disrupted after computer failure at UK control centrewww.bbc.com/news/uk-30454240
[Accessed on 19 September 2015]

Byte – Notes (2013) Home: Introduction to computing - Advantages and disadvantages of computers
[Accessed on 19 September 2015]



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