Resources of Information

All the time, we use information to communicate to each other. These informations are very important to understand what we are trying to say. This is one of the factors that contribute to the development of our society. There are five main resources to acquire information. These are people, hardware, software, data, and network. Today is the age of computers. These computers are some of the proofs that the world’s technology is advance. Even though we are in computer age, many practices are still adopted from early times to gather informations.

An example of this is the smoke signal. Smoke signal uses bonfires and a piece of cloth to signal out other tribes. The five main resources of information are present in this example. The people is the one who is doing the smoke signal, the bonfire and the piece of cloth are the hardware, the smoke is the data, the practice of using smoke signal is the software or the application used and the other tribe that gather the data is the network. The first one is the people. We can acquire information through people because you can ask them about what you want to know.

Information is gathered through people in the form of communication. Communication is the process of exchanging information to one another. A great factor that affects communication is the language used by each party involved. Each party must communicate in the same language that both of them understand. If they use different language, they can not understand each other and, thus, they can not acquire information. There are also called effective communication. These are the technique to effective gather information. Actually, communication becomes ineffective even you are using the same language.

These are determined by the way the speaker speaks or the way the listener listen. If the speaker speaks inaudibly or the listener is deaf or can not hear well, then there is a problem in communicating and gathering information. Hardware is also important in gathering information. Usually, hardware and software are linked together to gather information. Hardware is tools used to gather information. In the example earlier on smoke signal, the hardware is the bonfire and the cloth that make the smoke. Hardware itself can not gather information but it greatly helps out to obtain it.

These are used to gather easier information and obtain more credible data. If the person knows how use smoke signal but he does not have the equipment, he can not use this technique. As I said earlier, software is used with hardware. Software is merely an application or techniques that use the hardware to gather information. Software or the application is very hard to use when hardware is not present in terms of gathering information and is impossible to use without hardware in terms of gathering information using the computer.

In the example of smoke signal, the practice of doing the smoke signal represents the software. Even though the person has the material needed to perform the smoke signal but he does not know the technique, he can not use this technique. The next one is the data. Data are the one that gives information directly. Hardware and software are use to process data. In communication, language is the data because the information is acquired through the language. Information is usually in the form of data.

The data that is given by the hardware and the software is called the raw data or primary data. This data is then processed to acquire the desired information. In our example, the data is the smoke that is being signaled out. This smoke is the raw or primary data. Then, the smoke is being process and will be translated to acquire the desirable information. The process of translation is another kind of software or application. The last resource is the network. This is used to transfer information and allow it to travel from one place to another place.

In this case, the information will be acquired even though the parties communicating are far away with each other. In our example, the tribe that received the signal is the network. Now, this tribe can also signal it out to another network until the information arrived in its destination.

References University of Minnesota (2006). Gathering Information. Retrieved 6 November 2007 from http://www1. umn. edu/ohr/careerdev/resources/resume/gathering. html Mind Tool Ltd (2007). Information is Inspiration. Retrieved 6 November 2007 from http://www. mindtools. com/pages/article/newLDR_03. htm

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