Convergence

Convergence

While studying the dot.com boom and bust in my information technology class our professor explained to our class the importance of convergence. Here are a few of the main attributes of convergence that he talked about data throughput, access, computational speed, and memory usage.

Now if you think at all like I think we know that there were numerous attributes that contributed to the boom and bust. However, these attributes that my professor mentioned are actually pretty interesting. In fact, data throughput, access, computational speed, and memory usage are a few things that most of us either take for granite, or do not even pay any attention to.

Data throughput was defined as “The speed in which we receive and send data.” It began with 14.4, 28.8, 56, 112, kilobytes per second, and then we had T1, T3 lines. After that the satellite connections, and finally wireless. Dictionary.com tells us, “Data-Throughput refers to how much data can be transferred from one location to another in a given amount of time. It is used to measure the performance of hard drives and RAM, as well as Internet and network connections”.

Of course with all of this booming business and technology everyone had to have access to the information highway. Therefore, we all begin to join in by purchasing all the gadgets and devices that we needed. However, I am willing to bet that only a few people even thought of the fact that everything that we were purchasing at the time would be outdated in less than two years. “Mind blowing right.”

Next we visited the topic of computational speed which is the speed at which a computer can process data usually defined as MIPS or Millions of Instructions Per Second. I must add this topic may be better described as the increase in computational speed. As the boom continued the world desired smaller and faster ways of communication.

Finally, our memory usage and yes you guessed right if you were thinking that this increased as well. According to dictionary.com memory usage is, “a part of a computer in which information is stored for immediate use by the central processing unit.”  But of course today we do not use that fancy language we just want to know how much “RAM” does the darn thing have?

I stated earlier that most of these attributes of the boom are things that we do not really ever pay attention too. and I think that is true about most computer users or customers unless they are really up on technology.