And so it begins...

Welcome to my very first blog post! It's an exciting time.

Why am I blogging now? I'm back at university studying for an MSc in Information Science, and part of the coursework involves blogging. So it seemed wise to get a bit of practice in. Who knows, maybe I will keep it up!

Our lecturer recommended we get in the habit of blogging what we learned this week. So, what have I learned in my first lecture? 

An Introduction to Computers and Digital Information

The aim of the first lecture was to 'introduce the nature and potential of computer and digital information represented at a number of levels and to provide practical experience of using and managing digital data represented in a number of forms and formats.'

To begin with, we discussed the impact of information. After all, we live in an 'information society', and terms are thrown around in popular culture and the news. So it's important to try and figure out what everybody is talking about. Especially when we consider how much information is 'out there', just on the web. Up to 5 exabytes (that's 1 million, million, million bytes if you're curious) were generated in a year in 2003 (Lyman et al, 2003). And in digital terms, 2003 was a long time ago, so this is only increasing. As an information scientist (in the making) it is vital to understand the technology which helps us to organise, manipulate and use data.

Studying at City University, I will be learning about the 'information' part of IT. So I'll be looking at computers and software as tools. Furthermore, I will be looking at architectures not just individual machines and programs. The analogy we were given is comparing a bricklayer to an architect - the information scientist (the 'architect') needs a wider understanding of the impact of IT on information (whereas computer scientists are the 'bricklayers' building the programs).

Looking at bits, bytes and so on was a nice recap from Computer Science A level (which feels like a long time ago, but apparently the knowledge is all still in there somewhere). In our lecture we looked at bits (binary digits) and formats (the agreed structures like ANSI/ASCII). Fortunately I won't have to add up in binary like I did at A level!

As well as formats we considered files - named collections of related digital information. Every file name has meaning attached to it, 'telling' the computer which program to use to read the file. A file-centred approach considers files as single entities with extensions to show the format. Alternatively, a document-centred approach is when documents are built from files, for example a blog post made up from text, video, images, etc. More on this next week!

All in all an enjoyable lecture! And hopefully an enjoyable first blog. Perhaps I will have to put my serious face on in future as I will be throwing in references to related reading. But for now, here is a picture of the sunshine I drew in paint.