I.C.T In Our Society Essay Example for Free

I.C.T In Our Society Essay This report is about how ICT has affected us as a society. For example, for entertainment purposes like games consoles, communication purposes such as mobile phones, storage purposes such as storing music on a CD or for social purposes such as email. E-mail The first thing I will look at will be email. With email you can quickly talk to friends, work colleagues, basically anyone who has an email address. I have two email accounts, one at home provided by hotmail, which is useful because I can log-on to it anywhere via the Internet. I also have one at school provided by Solihull L.E.A, which I can only access at school; both have a unique log-on I.D and password. With my personal account (hotmail) I can choose a unique login I.D and password when I register, providing it ends with @hotmail.com. With my school account I can only choose the password. As a student my school account is free and I get absolutely no junk mail thanks to the junk-mail filter and I can receive emails from anyone. The L.E.A also scans every email for anything suspicious such as files containing viruses; if one of these are found then the L.E.A will not let the email through. Email is useful and easy and is an efficient way to contact my friends and relatives. If I want to get in touch with several people in one email I simply put a semi-colon in between each persons email address. If I want to get in touch with several people, email is one of the easiest ways to do so. I can set up an address book which means I could email everyone in that address book at once, also by setting up an address book I dont have to remember everyones email address and it helps me stop making mistakes. Workers in offices usually have email accounts open all day, which means if they receive an email the response time is very quick. The problem with email is that if the inbox becomes full I couldnt receive any more emails until I had deleted some of my old ones. Pictures take up a lot of space and some pictures can be too big to send in the first place. Say for instance I had done a word document in history on Hitler and the Nazis, I may want to carry on with it at home but when I come to send it, I cant because I have too many pictures on there that take up space. Also if someone doesnt have broadband than it could take a long time to attach a document or presentation to an email and even with broadband it could take a long time depending on the size of the file. A good thing about most email accounts is that they are free but then I get a lot of adverts and pop-ups. If email companies are going to give people free email then they need to get the money from somewhere to make sure they can afford the payment of the site, this is where the adverts and pop-ups come in, other companies pay companies such as hotmail to put their adverts and pop-ups on their websites hence hotmail can pay for the upkeep of the site. I can set up a filter on my email account so that I only receive emails from people in my address book. The problem is though that before I can receive emails from someone I need to add them to my address book and if someone changes their email I need to edit my address book. The alternatives to email are fax, which can be quick but can cost a lot of money, or text that is quick so long as the other person has their phone on; you also need signal and credit, which can be a problem. Both can be useful if email is not available, but when compared to the quickness and the fact that email is basically free, email is the best thing to use. To conclude, email is useful to communicate with people no matter where they are in the world mostly free of cost, which means it can be better than a mobile phone or fax but due to the time difference between countries, there is no guarantee that they will receive the email in the time you need them to see it. Entertainment The next thing I will look at will be the entertainment side of ICT and for this I will look at games consoles. There is a lot of competition at the moment between the PS2 made by Sony, the Gamecube made by Nintendo and the Xbox made by Microsoft. People use games consoles for 3 main purposes; the first is single player use where the player simply plays the game on their own trying to complete the game. The second is multiplayer use where two or more people can play on one console and either try to complete the game cooperatively or go against each other in different game types. The third is online play, which has only recently taken off since broadband became so popular. At the moment there is no prospect for online play on the Gamecube but Xbox and PS2 have successful online play. Players who want to play online need broadband to play because dial-up cant handle the speed that is required. The Xbox online play is called Xbox Live and players make an account for à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½40 a year and can make a list of friends and whenever their friends are online they can join them and play with them. The problem is that if two friends want to play together they both need the same game and both need to be online. Also, if broadband is no t available then people cant play online. I use an Xbox and play Xbox Live quite often. I have experienced problems though, for example my broadband router had broken and I couldnt go on Xbox Live until I got it fixed, also the Xbox Live service had not responded which again meant that I couldnt use the service. The other problem is that paedophiles are able to use the service so you never know if the person you are talking to is being genuine or not. People also use games consoles for watching DVDs but this has only become available in the newer consoles. With the Xbox you can also put a CD into the Xbox and save it to the integrated hard disk and can then play the CDs while your playing a game. Again this is technology that has only recently been introduced. Another type of entertainment is digital TV. Originally TV and radio used analogue signals but over the past few years more and more digital radios and digital TVs have become available. A digital signal is basically a TV or radio signal that is computerised and has to be decoded at the receiving end in order to watch digital TV or listen to virtually crystal clear music on a radio. Digital television (DTV) allows you to receive digital transmissions from different TV stations that have installed digital transmitters and record their programmes using equipment that can handle digital signals. With DTV you can enjoy excellent quality pictures and clear sound. But all good things come at a price and in order to watch Digital TV you must buy either a digital TV adaptor for an existing TV, which will cost about à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½100, or you can buy a new integrated DTV television set known as a iDTV for about à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½500. I use Digital TV because I have Sky Digital. It is a good quality picture and good sound and also doesnt cost too much at approx à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½20 a month. I have a digibox, which is basically a small box on top of or underneath the TV and the signal comes through a Sky dish on the side of my house. The signal is then transferred to the digibox and I can watch the channel I want on my TV. There are a lot of channels on Sky and I only have a few of them. There are also movie channels which show movies 24/7 on about 12 different channels, and sport channel which shows sport 24/7 on about 15 different channels, but to have all these channels can cost over à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½50 a month. The disadvantage comes when there is bad weather. In heavy rain the signal often gets interrupted which means that either no signal is received or a very poor signal is received. As in a thunderstorm, the signal gets interrupted and no signal can be received. Other problems can be if the station I am receiving the picture from is experiencing technical problems no signal can be received. Most of the time though the quality is good and there is no problem. A revolutionary new technology that Sky has introduced is called Sky plus. With this you get a new digibox and Sky plus allows you to pause live TV, record shows and watch them later without the use of a VCR. You can even rewind live TV if you want to watch something again, such as a good goal in a football match. If you do stop or rewind then a little counter comes up on screen that tells you how far behind the live TV you are, then by simply pressing play on the remote control you can carry on watching from where you paused it or you can just go back to the live TV by pressing the sky button. This is technology that has only recently been introduced and costs an extra à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½10 on top of whatever sky package you already have. Storage Media There are a lot of different types of Storage Media. Originally data was stored on floppy disks but space was limited and the disks were quite large. Consequently there soon became a need for more and more space to store things on. Floppy disks could only hold 1.4mb of data but then zip drives became available which could hold different amounts of data, the maximum of which was 250mb. The disadvantage of this was that you couldnt put the disk straight into your computer. You had to buy a zip drive which either connected to the computer through USB or you could plug it straight into the computer. This was only a short- term solution and demand came for more and more space. The answer was compact disks, known as CDs for short. Originally designed to hold music, CDs could hold up to 700mb of data, an ideal source for storing data. Nowadays computers are fitted with CD-Rewriters (CD-RW), which can store music on a CD, make a copy of a CD, or just store es.here are currently two types of disks available they are: CD-Record (CD-R) this can only have files or music stored on it once and then you cant add or take anything off the CD. CD-Rewritable (CD-RW) this can have music or files stored on it as many times as you want. If you add something and feel you want to add more, you can easily do this. You can now get a DVD type disk. These can hold much more data than normal CDs but they do cost more and will not work on some older computers. I usually use CD-R to store music because CD-RW does not work on some CD players, which can be a problem. If I want to store data on a CD however I usually use a CD-RW as most computers can read these and I can always add more data at a later stage. Businesses use CD-RW on their computers because if they have data that they want everyone in the office to have, then they can simply put the data on a CD and make numerous copies of it. They can then give everyone in the office a copy of the CD. At school we use CD-RW. For example, in the ICT course, the school wanted us each to have two CDs. They had the two CDs they wanted and then copied them and gave everyone doing the ICT course a copy to take home. The CDs had useful software and information on that I will use while doing the ICT course. The obvious disadvantage to storing data or music on CDs is that if the CD becomes full then no more data can be put onto the CD. If you want to put a PowerPoint presentation and a word document on a CD then the presentation may take up a lot, maybe even all, the space. This will depend on the content and how many pictures it has on it. If the presentation does take up all the space then there wont be enough room for the word document and that would mean you would have to use another CD. That would be an inconvenient because you would have to carry two CDs around. The alternative to CDs is email but the amount of data that can be sent by email can be limited. Also the person who needs the information may not have access to a computer. Another alternative is to print all the information on paper and post it to the person who needs it. Communication Mobile phones are everywhere these days and virtually everyone has got one. Mobile phones used to be much larger than they are now and were a big inconvenience to carry around, as they couldnt just fit into your pocket like the mobile phones of today. Only wealthy businessmen owned them, as they were expensive to both use and buy. As with all things, over time they got smaller and smaller and now they can be very small and more and more people have them. They are even regarded as a necessity to young people. People dont just use mobile phones for calling other people though. Texting has become a very popular way to communicate, especially amongst the younger generation. There are two main types of message; Short Message Service (SMS) this is the most common use of texting and one of the most useful. A message, just like an email, of up to 150 characters can be sent to one or more people at once for an average of 10p per message. Due to the small amount of characters a texting language has developed to reduce space and therefore enable you to say more in a message. An example of this language would be you has been shortened to just u. They both sound the same but one takes up fewer characters than the other. Hundreds of thousands of these messages are sent every day from mobile to mobile and providing signal is good and both people have there mobile phones on, a text message can be sent from here to Australia in an amazing 6 seconds. New services have become available using text messages. For example phone companies such as Vodafone allow mobile phone users to subscribe to a service where football or cricket scores can be sent to the subscribers phone as soon as they happen. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) Another recent development, MMS is an advanced form of SMS. Instead of just sending a message, new mobile phones will allow you to send photos, or you could send ringtones, or a pre-recorded voice message. These new phones are a little heavier then old mobile phones, but they are more sophisticated. For instance, if you go on holiday, instead of sending a postcard to your friends and family you could just take a picture using the inbuilt camera and send it using an MMS message. You can even add some writing to it. I have a new mobile phone with a digital camera; I can take good quality pictures and then send them to my friends. I also use a mobile phone to text my friends but to do this I need a good signal and sufficient credit. Businesses use mobile phones, especially people that travel around a lot and are not based in one location all the time. Salesmen would find it hard to manage without mobile phones, as they need to be able to keep in touch with their customers, and with one another, at all times. One major disadvantage of mobile phones is that they are thought to emit radioactivity. Although this has not been proven there are many people that believe that radio masts and mobile phones are a health problem to them and there are strict planning laws regarding the positioning of radio masts.

Graduation Speech -- Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

I realize that, during these short minutes I have to address my fellow classmates, all I truly have to offer you are my own thoughts and a little bit of philosophy that I have picked up during my three years here at West High School. Throughout our high school careers, we have been presented with clichà ©s and catch-phrases that are meant to epitomize our entire school career into three or four words: Class of 2000, Bridge to the Millennium, and The Future is Now. As true as all of those phrases may be, I do not believe that any of them can define our entire education. The common tie between all of those themes is this: They all focus on what is to come. They tell us of how we should be years from now, as opposed to acknowledging how we are at this moment. What I want to focus on now i...

Darkness in Poe, Hawthorne, Melville and Dickinson Essay

E. A. Poe, Hawthorne, Melville and E. Dickinson’s works contain similar elements and images which can be related to the theme of darkness. These authors used these motives as their main subject throughout their works. Some of them led very gloomy and dark life so they used those experiences to utter their feelings by putting them on the paper. These poems and works can come across as kind of morbid at first sight so they will be thoroughly explained in the further text. E. A. Poe was labelled as immoral, crazy and depressive by his contemporaries partly because of his most famous poem â€Å"The Raven†. Many of them considered Poe’s behaviour insane when actually he was just a version of Romantic period moody hero like Byron, Keats and Shelly, yet today those â€Å"insane† people are called artists. His works were marked as spooky, spine-tingling and most importantly dark. Furthermore, a solid comparison can be made between 19th century horror writer Poe and 21th century horror writer Stephen King. Although centuries have passed the motif of darkness stays present. The Raven is a poem filled with dark, lonely and melancholic symbols. One of them to begin with is Gothic setting of the poem. â€Å"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore†. â€Å"Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;/ And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. † It’s almost like today’s readers can see in films. One can picture a small cabin deep in the woods on a cold December night with nothing but one candle and a man like shadow which can be seen through the window. Nevertheless, it is a perfect prelude to a horror movie or in this case to a horror poem. In addition to dark setting there is a dark protagonist, a young man suffering a great amount of pain, more precisely loss of a loved woman. Any human would start to question himself and talk to himself as he did in all of that loneliness and misery, but the only reply he got from the raven is â€Å"Nevermore†. That word is pretty devastating for the man on the edge. The Raven itself is a bad omen, dark one since it gives volume to a dark, spooky, ghostly atmosphere. His black feathers are traditionally considered to be a magic sign of something evil, rotten and ill. For the tone Poe is looking for, the raven is perfectly suitable bird. It looks just like the night it came out of. Yet again the night is another motif in poem which is entirely dark in physical and psychological sense. Night represents mysterious and slightly dangerous power of nature and it fits perfectly in the poem. Poe does not choose to write a horror of a sunny afternoon’s setting. One of the first things one can notice while reading The Scarlet Letter is enormous amount of hypocrisy. The society itself is hypocritical, nothing is white or black, people lie and everyone wears a mask, so that can be interpreted as dark motif. There are many examples of collision of light and darkness throughout the novel. Light is used to describe and emphasize good qualities of a human within or present state of emotions. And on the other hand, dark is obviously opposite of that. For example there is a scene when Pearl turns her head away from bright sunlight after stepping out in her mother’s arms from the dark, gloomy prison. This shows the contrast between light and dark and also evokes pity for the baby and her mother’s imprisonment. â€Å"She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison. † There is another example of light and dark in Hester’s description of Chillingsworth. She describes him as a devil-like figure with a black soul and eyes burning red like fire. Light and darkness represent change of behaviour and personality in a character and this is one of the best examples of that change. Chillingsworth becomes literally and figuratively dark and continues tormenting Dimmesdale. The forest in the novel is described as dark several times especially in comparison with the town. Everything happening outside of the town is considered to be dark which means sinful. For example, Hester who is a sinner in the eyes of society lives on the outskirts of town in the woods. Society dismissed her and marked her as an outcast. The fact she is living on a border of town and forest shows how certain people thought of her in certain situations. During the night she found refuge in the woods with Dimmesdale and during the day she was a sinner in the eyes of society in the town. The forest was seen as the place of evil by townsmen because it was unknown and mysterious. The wilderness of the forest is compared with the Hester’s moral wilderness. â€Å"She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest. In Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville one can use doubling as a dark motif. The first example of doubles is Nippers and Turkey. They act like one person which is shown in the way they live their lives. Turkey is off in the morning because of the alcohol he drank the night before and Nippers is off in the afternoon because of his indigestion due to the lunch he had not so long before. They act like two faces of a coin. The second example and most important one is Bartleby. Melville is evoking him as a kind of phantom double. Descriptions of him represent him as either ghostly or a corpse, â€Å"cadaverous†. His indifference toward anything makes The Lawyer feel guilty and the act of understanding and helping Bartleby is just a way of satisfying his conscience. Isolation is also a dark motif in Bartleby the Scrivener. During the day Bartleby stares at the window facing the wall and during the night he sleeps in his office. In fact, this is a perfect picture of Wall Street and people who were really emotionally imprisoned because of their work. The last author to be explained is Emily Dickinson. She was beyond her time, left all alone in her world with nobody there to understand her. Her life was lonely and that, among all else, resulted in two nervous breakdowns. The poetry she wrote was full of dark and mysterious motives. One of her many poems called â€Å"I’m Nobody, who are you? † can explain the core of Dickinson. Although this poem has element of comic sense to it, it’s not quite as comical as it seems. Here Dickinson has a light tone, childish voice and she invites reader to come to her dark side. The main thesis in this poem is the loss of identity and personality. „I’m Nobody! Who are you? / Are you – Nobody – too? / Then there’s a pair of us! / Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! â€Å" She is explaining that there is a pair of them, nobodies and outsiders. The speaker fears to reveal their identity because they will not be anonymous free-thinking â€Å"nobodies† that they have chosen to be. It is not arguable that all of these authors were lonely and filled with pain due to certain tragedies but some of them felt it more than others. If every aspect of their lives is taken in consideration one should give a gold medal in darkness and despair to Poe and Dickinson. Nevertheless, all of them were human with real human emotions and their way of coping with pain was by writing it on a piece of paper. No matter how morbid and depressing these works are, they are works of art. It is important to remember how difficult it is to share your emotions publically and let every individual to interpret it in its own way, maybe even comparing it to its own life experiences. That is the beauty of it.

Should Marijuana Be Legalized - 1668 Words

If marijuana was legalized, among state and local governments, there are major ways that the government would be saving money. Firstly, there would be savings within the police departments and resources. By cutting down the amount of criminal activity going on, fewer arrests will be made, the amount of police resources could be cut down as well, which would then result in savings in salary and other resources. Jerome Adda, Brendon McConnell and Imran Rasul of The University of Chicago Press state that, â€Å"A depenalization policy can free up police resources to tackle non-cannabis drug crime.† According to data retrieved from ABC’s Matthew Laratonda, â€Å" The 50 states and the District of Columbia spend a combined $3.6 billion each year enforcing bans on marijuana.† Prosecutorial and judicial resources will be needed less as well, which will also lower the court and prosecution costs. Lastly, one can find a great savings in government funds is within correcti onal resources. This is because the amount of marijuana related incarcerations would be greatly reduced. In the United States the prison population is six to ten times higher than in most European nations (United States Bureau). When it comes to the federal expenditures it gets a little trickier, but according to the United States census, the federal government, without worries of marijuana related crimes in the United States will save approximately $2.6 billion (United States Bureau). Although, by decriminalizing marijuana,Show MoreRelatedShould Marijuana Be Legalized?849 Words   |  4 Pageswhether marijuana should be legalized. Around 23 states have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use. In the state of Illinois, medicinal use of marijuana has been passed on April 17, 2013. Since January 2014, patients are able to obtain marijuana with a doctor s recommendation. The new debate is whether marijuana should be legalized for the general public as a recreational drug. Although some believe that marijuana is harmless, and that it has beneficial medicinal uses, marijuana shouldRead MoreShould Marijuana Be Legalized?1715 Words   |  7 PagesMarijuana in Society Cannabis, formally known as marijuana is a drug obtained from the tops, stems and leaves of the hemp plant cannabis. The drug is one of the most commonly used drugs in the world. Only substances like caffeine, nicotine and alcohol are used more (â€Å"Marijuana† 1). In the U. S. where some use it to feel â€Å"high† or get an escape from reality. The drug is referred to in many ways; weed, grass, pot, and or reefer are some common names used to describe the drug (â€Å"Marijuana† 1). Like mostRead MoreShould Marijuana Be Legalized?1489 Words   |  6 Pagescannabis plant or marijuana is intended for use of a psychoactive drug or medicine. It is used for recreational or medical uses. In some religions, marijuana is predominantly used for spiritual purposes. Cannabis is indigenous to central and south Asia. Cannabis has been scientifically proven that you can not die from smoking marijuana. Marijuana should be legalized to help people with medical benefits, econo mic benefits, and criminal benefits. In eight states, marijuana was legalized for recreationalRead MoreShould Marijuana Be Legalized?1245 Words   |  5 PagesMarijuana is a highly debatable topic that is rapidly gaining attention in society today.   Legalizing marijuana can benefit the economy of this nation through the creation of jobs, increased tax revenue, and a decrease in taxpayer money spent on law enforcement.   Ã‚  Many people would outlaw alcohol, cigarettes, fast food, gambling, and tanning beds because of the harmful effects they have on members of a society, but this is the United States of America; the land of the free and we should give peopleRead MoreShould Marijuana Be Legalized?1010 Words   |  5 PagesThe legalization of marijuana became a heated political subject in the last few years. Twenty-one states in America have legalized medical marijuana. Colorado and Washington are the only states where marijuana can be purchased recreationally. Marijuana is the high THC level part of the cannabis plant, which gives users the â€Å"high† feeling. There is ample evidence that supports the argument that marijuana is beneficial. The government should legalize marijuana recreationally for three main reasonsRead MoreShould Marijuana Be Legalized?1350 Words   |  6 Pagespolitics in the past decade would have to be the legalization of marijuana. The sale and production of marijuana have been legalized for medicinal uses in over twenty states and has been legalized for recreational uses in seven states. Despite the ongoing support for marijuana, it has yet to be fully legalized in the federal level due to cultural bias against â€Å"pot† smoking and the focus over its negative effects. However, legalizing marijuana has been proven to decrease the rate of incrimination in AmericaRead MoreShould Marijuana Be Legalized?1231 Words   |  5 Pagesshows the positive benefits of marijuana, it remains illegal under federal law. In recent years, numerous states have defied federal law and legalized marijuana for both recreational and medicinal use. Arizona has legalized marijuana for medical use, but it still remains illegal to use recreationally. This is absurd, as the evidence gathered over the last few decades strongly supports the notion that it is safer than alcohol, a widely available substance. Marijuana being listed as a Schedule I drugRead MoreShould Marijuana Be Legalized? Essay1457 Words   |  6 PagesSHOULD MARIJUANA BE LEGALIZED? Marijuana is a drug that has sparked much controversy over the past decade as to whether or not it should be legalized. People once thought of marijuana as a bad, mind-altering drug which changes a person’s personality which can lead to crime and violence through selling and buying it. In the past, the majority of citizens believed that marijuana is a harmful drug that should be kept off the market and out of the hands of the public. However, a recent study conductedRead MoreShould Marijuana Be Legalized?1596 Words   |  7 Pages But what needs to be known before a user can safely and completely make the decision if trying Marijuana is a good idea? Many do not want the drug to be legalized because they claim that Cannabis is a â€Å"gateway drug†, meaning it will cause people to try harder drugs once their body builds up a resistance to Marijuana, because a stronger drug will be needed to reach a high state. This argument is often falsely related to the medical si de of the debate over legalization. It is claimed that this wouldRead MoreShould Marijuana Be Legalized?985 Words   |  4 PagesLegalize Marijuana Despite what people believe about marijuana, it hasn’t once proved to be the cause of any real issue. It makes you wonder what the reason as to why there is a war on drugs. Why is marijuana the main concern? Since the time that alcohol and tobacco became legal, people wonder why marijuana isn’t legal yet. The fact that marijuana is illegal is mainly caused by the amount of money, jobs, and pride invested in the drug war. Once the government starts anything, they stick to it. At