The role of computers in society

Computers have several important uses in the Information Society of the 21st century:

• Integrated communication
  • Intranets
  • Internet
  • Data (email, fax, SMS) via telephone
  • Telephony routing
• Office organisation and communication
  • Text production
  • Database management
  • Calculation
  • Intranet communication
• Information storage, processing, transfer
  • Databases (relational, object-oriented, associative)
  • Database query and search software
  • Data security management
  • Publishing (electronic publishing vs. computer-supported publishing)
• Scientific computing
  • Symbolic computing (spell checkers, grammar checkers, dictionaries, dialogue systems; genetic algorithms, ...)
  • Statistical computing (empirical studies of large populations, texts, ...)
  • Signal processing coupled with statistical computing (physics, speech technology, ...)

Some questions for discussion:

1. How do these kinds of activity relate to each other? Or are they totally different? Can you find a way of classifying them according to their essential features?
2. How much communication is involved in these activities? How much non-computer-oriented communication takes place in parallel in each of the activities?
3. How many kinds of information are communicated in addition to language?
4. How does `text' in the traditional sense relate to `hypertext'?