TRABAJO PRÁCTICO 1:
Computers and communication system
The combination of computers and telecommunications is causing a profound revolution in our society which will completely change all our lives. The communication of information is essential to all sectors of society; all types of business and commerce, education, medicine. Governments and administration, and individuals, need to communicate in order to function. We can distinguish between communication between individuals (at a personal, business, or government level) and the "mass media": radio, televison and newspapers.
At the moment, most communication of information among individuals is still done on paper in the form of memoranda, letters and reports. This is not only inefficient but also very costly. It is now possible to construct a system where textual information is done by a single system of electrical impulses.
Homes, offices, banks, schools, hospitals and government departaments can communicate with each other by computer, with an enormous saving in time, space and labour. More important, perhaps, is that all the public information at present stored in libraries and different places (information on science, literature, history, etc. plus information on today's weather, the price of vegetables, the result of a football match, etc.) can be instantly accessed by anybody with a computer. Soon, even buildings will have information provided in the same way, and architects are already talking about "intelligent building".
"Mass media" are also being changed by computer technology. Newspaper and books are still important, but television, with its new capacity to offer progams from different countries and continents, plus teletext services is much more important. Information offered in newspapers and books is more efficiently provided by computers: the information in daily newspaper can be revised every hour (or minute!) on computer, and all the information contained in a university library can be stored on a few disks and any part of it retrieved in seconds. More and more, we live in a "global village" where everybody on planet earth is connected by television, radio, telephone, etc. Satellites are an important element in facilitating national and international communication, and all this book that the computer's basic function is to receive, manipulate, store, and retrieve information. When we establish connections between all the separate computers, and when it is possible for everybody to have access to computers, then we enter into the "information society". Computers can be connected in "L.A.N.s" (Local Area Networks), or by "Modems" (using existing telephone lines). With the development of optical fibres and laser technology, it is getting easier and cheaper every day for all of us to have access to information, and to communicate with each other, in a way never imagined before, thanks to computers!.
Worksheet:
Read the text "computer and communication system" and:
- Identify subject and verbs in each sentence.
- Identify passive sentences.
- Answer: What is the text about?
- Translate the text.