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Informatics |Информатика

LESSON 2

Read the text: COMPUTERS IN THE OFFICE

First, safety. Radiation screens are available, and have been for some years. Most of them place an emissions barrier between you and the front of your display, while others encase the entire monitor, protecting you from side and rear emissions as well. Many offices already have these screens available for their workers.

The paperless office is still a dream, but the basic tools are in place. We receive mail in two basic forms: on paper in an envelope, or electronically on our computers. Most of us have access to e-mail in one form or another. That’s half the battle won. The other half is a bit more difficult, but it can be, and is being, done. All mail can be opened in the mail room and scanned into the computer using optical character recognition (OCR). Then a document-image-processing program takes over and lets you accomplish electronically what you would normally do with paper. Various personal computer products are available for this purpose.

Pen-based computing is coming into its own. Pen-input capabilities are beginning to show up in hardware, applications, and operating systems. You can’t take notes that will go directly into your computer, and the technology wouldn’t know what to do with your doodles, but it would know that a doodle isn’t a valid word. And that’s a start – a good one.

Multimedia really needs no explanation. There are many packages that help you create multimedia presentations, and the tools to create customized multimedia training programs are also plentiful. CD-ROM disks, such as Ziff-Davis’s Computer Select and Microsoft’s Bookshelf, let you access mountains of information with ease.

Computers are already much smaller than they used to be, and you can’t go to an industry show these days without finding some company promoting its ‘small footprint’. When you start talking about laptops, notebooks, and palmtops, the question becomes, ‘How small is too small?’ FAX capabilities are already available on boards that you can plug into your computer. When you combine the technologies present in internal modems with voice recognition, the basics for having your computer replace your phone-voice line are in place.

Voice recognition is another technology that may appear limited in its present form, but it shows great promise for the future. Current voice-recognition systems can handle speaker-dependent continuous speech or speaker-independent discrete speech.

Speaking to your computer will be a major factor in the office of the future. In some locations, it is already a major factor in the office of today. Stock is traded in some brokerage houses by verbal command from the broker to the computer. So, you ask your computer a question, and it answers you – verbally. Depending on the rate of speech sampling used and the resolution the A/D converter uses for each sample, we can already create a credible approximation of human speech with digitized sound.

Large display screens? You can get screens of up to 35 inches now, and between Barco and Mitsubishi competing for the honor of having the largest monitor, it’s hard to predict just how big they will get in the future. As for color, some companies offer upwards of 16 million. Somewhere in that number must lie the perfect color for reducing eye-strain.

The real disaster that most of us still have to deal with is the traditional keyboard, which is the cause of much pain and suffering in the form of carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive-strain injuries. Wrist rests are available to alleviate the problem, and new designs for strange-looking keyboards, Star Trek-style, are moving from the drawing board to the factory.

Enterprise networks are proliferating almost as fast as LANs did just a year or two ago. Public data networks are ripe for the dialing up and signing on. And the Internet already exists, with several of the research and educational facilities on its membership rolls.

Worldwide connectivity is already available in the enterprise networks of some major corporations (e.g. DEC’s DECnet and IBM’s Systems Network Architecture). Admittedly, these are proprietary networks, but they are living proof that the concepts can and does work.

 1. Match the left part with the right:

1. The paperless office	a) are beginning to show up in hardware, applications, and operating systems.
2. Pen-input capabilities	b) can handle speaker-dependent continuous speech or speaker-independent discrete speech.
3. Current voice-recognition systems	c) are ripe for the dialing up and signing on.
4. Public data networks	d) is still a dream, but the basic tools are in place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Complete the sentences with the suggested words: technology, into, applications, directly

Pen-based computing is coming _____ its own. Pen-input capabilities are beginning to show up in hardware, _______, and operating systems. You can’t take notes that will go _______ into your computer, and the _______ wouldn’t know what to do with your doodles, but it would know that a doodle isn’t a valid word.