As
I was thinking about a job for computer networking and computers, I realized I could
probably ask any of my friends and family about their job. I was thinking that
almost any job they were in some way connected to a network. Someway to relay
information back and forth. The job I ended up choosing was that of my best
friend Dylan. He works for North Ogden City. As we were talking it really
opened my eyes how many people do this without realizing what they are really
doing. I think this might also jump a little ahead of computers to because I found
out that all city workers have Ipads and are always on the go moving from one
job to the next and being able to send in all the details of the job to city
hall and to their boss.
The first question I asked him was, what are the roles of
computers and tablets in their job, and how are they connected through a
network? His response was they use computers to put information about each
water pipe each costumer, how old each pipe is, when it was last maintained,
what water meters have to switched out, they also once a month drive around the
city and each meter it hooked up to radio that broadcasts a signal to an
antenna they have on their truck and can read how many gallons of water the
house has used and tell if it leaking based on that information. So the radio I
would say is a type of network. One piece of hardware transmitting information
to another piece of hardware. Now before these radios were installed they use
to have to manually open every water meter lid and read the meter itself now
all they have to do is drive by, you can imagine how much time that saves. Also
all the information they gather can be sent to any computer that is on the city’s
connection. So for example his supervisor can look at it and see that there are
no problems with their main water line. The city hall as well can look at it
and compare it to their records and make sure they are charging everyone
correctly for the water.
The next question I asked him was, how much more work
would it be with all the hardware but not connected to a network? He said well
without the network it, almost wouldn’t be worth having the tablets and
computer, because yeah you have the information, but so what, city hall cant
access it unless you take them a disk or a hard drive so you would have
download it to that, then drive it over to the city office, the public works
director, and anyone else who wanted to view the information city council,
mayor, Once a week they have to check the water pumps that pump water the whole
city. When they do this they have to collect readings off the pumps, like the
pressure they are putting out, the pressure coming in, they have to record
these numbers as well and have to report them, they have to send them to city
hall, they can now do this with the click of a button.
It is really cool how often we use computer networks
without thinking about, it has made working so much easier for everyone I believe.
Especially when you are connected with people who are across the world. The city
job might not have been the best choice because it really wouldn’t be that hard
to give the information in person, but when applied to much larger scale you
can see how important it really is, no matter where anyone in the whole world
is you can work with them, make deals, keep track of inventory and communicate.
Even in the future when we don’t need computes we can really do anything with a
tablet or a phone even. The ability to connect anywhere and anytime really does
flatten the world it doesn’t matter if they are your neighbor or in another
city, state, or if oceans separate you, anyone in the world can be connected to
anyone as long as they have access to the internet.
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