MODERN Indian offices are places in which we spend most of our time. They are home to our talents, energies, and efforts - our work. Offices reflect our society's values.
Exploring the changing Indian office, from its beginnings shows a way to study our nation's growth, from the industrial revolution to the postindustrial information age. Computers, typewriters, and calculators are the tools and weapons we use to wage battles and do the work of our advanced society.
It is hard to imagine the world without computers. Each day, millions of people working in offices and homes around the world depend on computer technology to do their jobs efficiently and economically. To truly understand the computer's history involves a daunting journey through mathematics, physics, and electrical engineering; through binary code, Boolean logic, real time, magnetic core memories, floating-point numerical notation, transistors, semiconductors, integrated circuits, and much, much more.
When computers were first developed, the people who programmed them considered the task quite maddening. Fortunately, learning to use a personal computer today is often as simple as spending a few hours reading an instruction manual or following a hands-on tutorial.
Emerging technologies are continually advancing the computer's capacity and usefulness, making 'the computer' a difficult term to define. In the broadest sense, a computer is an information - processing machine. It can store data as numbers, letters, pictures, or symbols and manipulate those data at great speed by following instructions that have been stored in the machine as pro grams.
The first computers were not computers as we define them today They were calculators, designed to solve mathematical problems. They |
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reduced the extraordinary amount of time it took people just to attempt to solve the problems themselves.
The Internet has revolutionised the computer and communications world. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities. The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for infor mation dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location.
The U.S. Department of Defense laid the foundation of the Internet roughly 30 years ago but the general public didn't use the Internet much till the World Wide Web (www) emerged in the early 1990s. About a decade ago in
June 1993, there were only 130 web sites. Now there are millions.
Outsourcing has moved from a niche technology management tool to a mainstream, strategic weapon for many firms. As the move to a multisourced environment accelerates, outsourcing has become the next new business-critical process - requiring that everyone who buys, sells or manages IT services be "reskilled" in this new methodology The major outsourcing services include call center, medical transcription, data processing, 3D animation, content development, technical writing, search engine optimizastion and |
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marketing services and design services.
A cutting edge career in IT is exciting, rewarding, challenging, and fun for those people who have the right skills and personality for the jobs. Two skills are consistent throughout all IT career require ments good problem solving skills, and good communication skills. A person in the IT field should enjoy learning new tech- nology
During the 1990's there were many more IT jobs than qualified workers to fill them. Since the economic down turn began in 2001, IT job growth declined. However, in 2002, about 3.3 per cent new jobs were created. In addition, in the list of the fastest growing occupations; the top seven careers in the next ten years are in the computer field. Information technology is a part of nearly every business and organization. In fact, non-IT companies hire more IT workers than IT companies do. User support jobs accounted for 55 per cent of new jobs in 2002. Companies have begun to demand more specific skills and more experience.
Job hunters in the IT field rely less on newspaper advertisements and more on Internet job boards where companies today often post IT vacancies. Successful job-hunting strategies must include net working with people, whether that person is a friend, someone met at a job fair, or a casual acquaintance. The companies find 27 per cent of their recruits through employee referral and 19 per cent through networking at job fairs or in the community.
The technological and grass- roots experience of India is the richest in the world: it needs to be studied, analyzed, expanded and publicized not only for the benefit of India, but for the benefit of the other 98 per cent of the world's population who are not currently "wired".
Naveen V |
