Creativity in Information Technology - Report Example

Creativity In Information Technology Student Name Course Title Date Introduction Creativity can be defined as the propensity to create or identify ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be valuable in resolving difficulties, interacting with others, and entertaining ourselves and others [Rob12]. While Weisberg (1993) defines creativity as an act, idea, or product that changes a prevailing realm, or that alters the current domain into a new one. According to Jackson (2004), creativity is an integral part to any disciplinary field of endeavor. In the field of information technology creativity has been exhibited massively stretching from innovative hardware, software and computer networking. This paper examines various creativity and innovations exhibited in the field of information technology. Creativity in computer hardware Challenges in the field of information technology motivated computer scientist to be more creative for example the ENIAC that was built in Moore School of Electrical Engineering was built to with an assumption that the machine will only execute similar problems for a very long time and it was cumbersome and time consuming to reprogram to be able to execute a different task as it required physical rewiring to come up with a new circuit. Due to von Neumann’s creative problem solving approaches, he came up with the concept of stored program concept[Dan04]. This allowed programs instruction to be feed in the same memory like data. With this concept computers could to execute a new task by simply serving it with new instruction set and the concept has been adapted till now. Computer hardware has considerably evolved from the time of the first generation computers to the fifth generation. The first generation computers were large and occupied a whole building [Gar10], and consumed a lot of power. In 1940s, there was a break through when the solid state technology (transistor) came to live. This reduced the size of computers and improved its speed and reliability. Computer scientist continued to search for a creative solution that will make computers more reliable, and diminished in size and in 1956 integrated circuit technology where several transistors were fabricated in a single chip[Dan04]. Computing devices have diminished in size till now it fits into small pockets. Use of keys was not viable any more and better ways of interacting with the device had to be researched because keys were limiting the size of the device and making it bulky. The touch screen an innovation by Doctor Sam Hurst in The University of Kentucky Research Foundation has substituted the keys[Mar11]. Touch screen is the easiest to use and the most intuitive compared to any other computer interface and allows users to interact with the system by touching graphical interface on the screen[Bel11]. Modern Organizations are moving their operation from manual to automated business, the cost of acquiring new desktop for every employee was burdening. This was solved by the idea of having a single server and L300 N-computing terminals with display unit, and other basic peripheral devices. With this technology an organization will only require a single operating system, single server serving several terminals. Diagram adapted from: http://cxitsupport.co.uk/it-computer-hardware-midlands/ncomputing/ncomputing-how-it-works Creativity in software Computer software can be thought has being guided by creativity, from the design of the computer interfaces, operating systems, application programs and more. Tracing the history of mainframe computers’ operating system up to the modern operating systems reveals the long journey creativity has made interaction easy and user friendly[Rob93]. Early operating systems required the user to inter instruction set through bunched cards, then it advanced to text based command interface were the user was required to memorize the instructions to be able to interact with the computer. To make work easier graphical user interface operating system was designed and Microsoft launched its first Windows 95 operating system. Another practical creativity depicted in Information Technology is the invention of the first HLL, FORTRAN by John Backus. FORTRAN allowed programs to be written in intelligible, algebraic-like commands instead of using ‘0s’ and ‘1s’ which was cumbersome remembering, and the codes were specific to a machine’s hardware. FORTRAN placed a layer of abstraction between the hardware and the human and consequently made programming and debugging easier and subsequently led to development of complex programs and tools. Web research engines are crucial and necessary too to any web user as it crawls the World Wide Web collecting any new information in the internet and offer a central place to make search requests. The WWW worm indexed web pages for easy retrieval of web resources. This concept has been widely used today by companies to advertise themselves and their product in the internet. Every ecommerce websites utilizes search crawlers to collect data on the performance of their product and to analyze the characteristics of online user. In 1982 a junior high school student Richard Skrenta developed the first computer virus called Elk Cloner[Jer10]. This virus attached itself to Apple DOS 3.3 OS, and multiplied through floppy disks inserted in the infected computer. This could not be considered as a positive development but its surely an innovation bend on creativity. Other form of creativity in software can be seen in the design of artificial intelligence systems and expert systems. Artificial intelligent systems can perform tasks that were earlier thought as requiring human intelligence. This technology has been used to design expert systems that perform tasks that require a given field of specialization for example doctors. Development of computer games has attracted a number people with different interests. This area has developed overtime being driven by creativity. Design of Games require high standard of creativity to come up with interesting games. Creativity in information communication Computer internetworking started as a military project to safeguard its data from eminent attacks during the Second World War. It was design to offer communication network that could continue functioning in the event of a major attacks to some of the most importance site[Wal12]. Later the researchers saw great potential in using internet in collaborative research and today internet serves as universal communication system that link thousands of networks via and international telecommunications backbone. The invention of the domains naming system enabled the internet to scale while letting users to use understandable names of computers. Creativity has also been depicted in information technology in solving IT problems through analogies. This analogy was adapted from the way human neurons respond to stimuli. Human neuron responds to stimuli at a fast speed even if some of the neurons are damaged due to redundancy and the mesh-like arrange of neurons in the body. Same concept has been adapted in information technology to create redundant and fault tolerant networks. The advent of wireless network can be thought as an innovation. Exchange of information without the use of physical wires was earlier taken as a dream, but this dream was realized when Guglielmo Marconi developed the first wireless telegraph system. And from then wireless technologies was been developed and data can be transmitted wirelessly over several thousand Kilometers. Conclusion Creativity in information technology is fueled by the need to solve the existing information technology problem, the need to make money from a new product, the desire to have new hardware and software in the market. Information technology have rapidly developed due to the pull of people this field attract each coming with their own form of creativity which when mixed together we get wonderful new services we consume today. Creativity needs caring about a problem sufficiently to work on it intensely, using analogies and other means of generating innovative results. 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