AQA ICT A2 Level © Nelson Thornes 2009 Section 10 Future developments 1 Section 10: Future developments ICT in the 21 st Century

AQA ICT A2 Level © Nelson Thornes 2009 Section 10 Future developments 2 Processing Power The processing power of computers is measured in flops (floating point operations), and is constantly improving. Supercomputers are the most powerful computers in the world. In June 2008, the world’s first petaflop computer was produced. It is called Roadrunner and was built for the US department of energy. Follow this link to a web site dedicated to supercomputers.link Click here to access a NOAA news article about climate and weather computers.here

AQA ICT A2 Level © Nelson Thornes 2009 Section 10 Future developments 3 Portability The demand for mobile computing has increased. Small devices have become much more powerful, but there is still a need for the user to interface with the system. Tiny screens and keyboards are not easy to use for large documents. This site This site is dedicated to UMPCs (ultra-mobile PCs).

AQA ICT A2 Level © Nelson Thornes 2009 Section 10 Future developments 4 Convergence Think about modern mobile devices and then try to think back ten, or even five, years. Make a list of all the devices a person would have to carry to provide the functionality delivered by a cutting edge phone. Click here to find out more.here

AQA ICT A2 Level © Nelson Thornes 2009 Section 10 Future developments 5 Connectivity Broadband has brought about huge increases in data transfer rates and there is a constant pressure to increase them further. Wireless connectivity using technologies such as Wifi and Bluetooth is allowing people to connect on the move. People are communicating more through , SMS and VOIP through both mobile devices and home and workplace computers.

AQA ICT A2 Level © Nelson Thornes 2009 Section 10 Future developments 6 Cyber crime The 2006 Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology report concluded that: ‘Computers are increasingly being targeted by criminals or used as tools to commit old and new types of crime.’ ‘Legislative change to address the increase in and diversity of computer crime is in progress. However, policing computer crime is resource- intensive, complex and requires support from a number of organisations.’ ‘There are several technologies available to improve computer security but their effectiveness may be limited without user awareness and education.’ ‘Responsibility for securing computers against crime largely rests with the user (individual or organisation), although there is debate over whether the government and industry should do more to protect users.’ For the full report, follow this link.link