Chapter 1 Information Technology, the Internet, and You

The five parts of information system:

1.  People
2.  Procedure
3.  Software
4.  Hardware
5.  Data

People, the main character of this system, where using all sources of information to increase the productivity of the system. Communication between information systems can be done in form of direct and indirect. Direct communication means that people are directly use the system to do something while indirectly is happen when people ask other people to use the system (like ticket counter, the worker will help the customer to access in the ticket system). Basically, the people use information system for business, entertainment, education and medicine.

Information system cannot be run effectively without a right procedure. Procedure can be described as the backbone for the system because it provides a specific rules or guidelines for computer to operate. In fact, to login any system like banking system (ATM), we need a login id or password to access the banking system like transfer the money from one account to another account. Without the right id or password, we cannot proceed into next stages. So, procedure is important to the system to keep the system is operating in the right track.

Software, which commonly called as the program was the organ of the system, which means software is inner program that we cannot see or touch but functionally. Basically, software can be categorized to two major forms, which is system software and application software. In detail, system software is collection of programs that launch the operating system like window, linux, Mac and etc. This kind of software enables the application software to interact with the hardware. While the application software which formerly known as end user software is the software we run for only one program only like Microsoft Office, Window Media Player, Internet Explorer and etc. This software usually used to help people to solve different task of problem like documenting and presenting. Therefore, application software also divided into two major groups, which is basic application (for single purpose only) and specialized application (for special task or multiple tasks).

Hardware, the body of the system will help people to communicate with the software. In general, hardware can be defined as the physical component of the system. There are many types of hardware, but normally what we can see are supercomputer (as the terminal of the computer), mainframe computer (largest computer will usually use by the large firm to transmit large amount of data), minicomputer (also known as mid-range computer lies between mainframe computer and minicomputer), and microcomputer (kind of computer usually we used like desktop and laptop).

Data, the raw forms of the information was collected and interpreted by the software and hardware to become information, which means only processed data, can be call as information. Data can be stored in electronically in document (Microsoft Work), worksheet (Microsoft Excel), databases (Microsoft Access) and presentation (Microsoft PowerPoint) files.