Introduction to Resources PDF

***WEEK 7*** **Information, Control, and Privacy** **Introduction to Resources** Organizations teat the company assets, such as buildings, equipment, and their manpower as important resources. Resources are the total means available to a company for increasing production or profit, including land...

***WEEK 7*** **Information, Control, and Privacy** **Introduction to Resources** Organizations teat the company assets, such as buildings, equipment, and their manpower as important resources. Resources are the total means available to a company for increasing production or profit, including land, labor, capital, and raw materials. Without resources, organizations would cease to exist. Imagine in a bank without money, a manufacturing plant without forklifts, or a school without teachers. These resources are known as **physical resources.** They are tangible and can easily identified. Physical resources usually starts from acquisition and are then assembled to be available for use when needed. Very often, the assemble process entails converting an essentially raw materials into a refined form, such as wood, cement, and steel for building construction. Once these resources have been assembled. C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Downloads\\it20.jfif **Figure4.1** A building construction site A manager strives to maximize their use: this includes allocating space for office use and identifying key areas in the building plans. Finally, the manager ask for replacement or repairs and maintenance of these resources at a critical time- before they become inefficient or obsolete.  **Figure 4.2** Philippine peso bills representing monetary values The other type of resources is called **conceptual resources.** Conceptual resources are non- tangible and are considered valuable for what they represent rather than their physical make-up. Money is considered a conceptual resources as each paper where it is printed. The same goes for human resources. While everyone can be considered employees in a company, their skills, knowledge, and job experience set them apart from one another, thus identifying the staff, managers, executives, and laborers. Managers use conceptual resources to manage physical resources or vice versa. One such example is the use of computers in organizations. A computer unit, by itself, may cost thousands of pesos. However once used, the content *saved* in those computer units become even more valuable resources, making the computer unit irreplaceable. The integrity of the saved files may be compromised, so security checks are often identified on the computers units-e.g., firewalls, anti-virus, biometric access, etc. to make sure they will not be lost. In this case, the saved computer files (conceptual resources) identify how the computer units assets such as smartphones. Losing a mobile phone is considered a tragedy, especially if it contains personal data, such pictures, videos, and numerous contracts. The pictures, videos, and contract list saved in the phone are considered *conceptual resources* while the smartphone is the *physical resources* (managing the conceptual resources). In both instances, the conceptual resources identified are called ***information.*** **Information as a Resources** Information can be simply defined as "facts about something or someone that are provided or learned." Facts are considered relevant truths which have been validated and identified. Data are considered facts; therefore, **processed data** are considered as **Information** as they are organized in such a way that they have additional value beyond the value of the facts themselves. Unlike other organizational resources, information is considered: **Expandable** Information can be expanded without compromising its integrity. In fact, by having additional information, much more can be understood from it. An example is a person's personal information. While knowing his or her name, contact details and current work may be useful, having the person's full curriculum vitae becomes more useful for those in, for example, the HR Department. **Compressible** Although expanded information can give a more detailed explanation, it may not always be needed. An example of this is in news sites. Instead of a barrage of details, news sites would often give one-liner headlines that provide enough information about the news. Another example is research abstracts. An abstract is normally a half or a one-page summary of the entire research. **Transportable** Information, especially digital information, is easily transportable. With the use of the internet and various technologies information can be sent though any of the following: 1. Send via email 2. Share via Facebook 3. Copy onto flash drive 4. Upload on YouTube Gossip or rumors tend to spread easily. Unfortunately, the same applies to any kind of information-be it true or not. **Sharable** Since information can be easily spread, it is considered sharable as well. Information can be kept calling it a secret. However, once a person decides to tell it to someone, then he or she will no longer have control over it. In some cases, certain parts of the secret can be kept. One such example is the secret recipe of KFC. It is known that there are 11 secret herbs and spices, but as to what these herbs and spices are, people can only guess. **Valuable Information** Let us say your professor assigns you to research on the different parts of a computer system. You plan to look for information online through search engines such as Google. How can you tell if the information you get is useful, or in this case, valuable for your research? Information is said to be valuable if it has the following characteristics (Stair & Reynolds, 2016): **Accurate** Accurate information is error-free. In some cases, inaccurate information is generated because inaccurate data was processed. Analysts call this as "garbage-in-garbage-out." By typing "parts of computer" in the search bar, Google gives you a list of several websites which contains the information you are looking for. However, how do you determine which are accurate and which are inaccurate? Usually, it is better to trust sites that are **formal** in nature rather ones such as blogs or forums. Formal Information Informal Information --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------- It is official authoritative. It is more casual, and less authoritative. It is meant to be taken seriously and is presented in a formal manner. It is presented in a less formal manner. It is usually more carefully prepared and verified than informal information, and its accuracy and reliability should also be higher. It possible less reliable. **Table 4.1** Formal Information vs. Informal Information Formal information for your research work could come from technical websites as well as academic websites. Pieces of informal information can still be considered accurate as long as they provide enough reference. Bits of informal information include those from blogs, wikis, social sites, and public forums. Nowadays, the use of **wikis** has become a norm when it comes to information research. The most popular wiki today is Wikipedia.org. The question, however, is: how accurate is the content in Wikipedia.org? **Complete** Complete information contains all the important facts. This is especially important in the field of medicine. Missing information could spell disaster, or worse, lead to death. If the information regarding allergies has been left out, doctors might inadvertently give wrong medication that could cause severe allergic reactions to the patient. **Economical** Information should be relatively economical to produce. Decision-makers always balance the value of information with the cost of producing it. With the spread of internet, information dissemination has become easier, faster and a lot cheaper. However, is the price worth it for integrity of the information? **Reliable** Reliable information can be depended on.in many cases, the reliability of information depends on the validity of the data collection method. In other cases, reliability depends on the source of information, which brings us back to valuable information being economical. Torrent sites offer pirated software, music, and movies for free. However, the resolution of the movie downloaded, for example, might not be clear and might even contain malware and virus that could infect the computer system. **Flexible** Flexible information can be used for different purposes. Depending on the situation, personal information can be used for a variety of ways. A school ID can be used to enter the school premises. The same ID can be used to transact business with the registrar's office during enrolment. It can be used to open a bank account or to apply for a student driver's permit. **Relevant** Relevant information is important to the decision-maker. For example, your assignment calls for searching "parts of a computer" online. You do not visit sites that tackle "parts of the human body" because they are irrelevant to your research topic. **Simple** Information should be simple, not overly complex. Sophisticated and detailed information may not be needed. Complex information may sometimes lead to confusion which could result in inaccuracy. **Timely** Timely information is delivered when it is needed. This is true in the case of weather predictions, stock market forecasts, and traffic management. **Verifiable** This means that information can be checked for correctness and authenticity. Most authors include references, bibliography, or citations in their works to enable readers to verify the content. **Accessible** Information should be easily accessible by authorized users to be obtained in the right format at the right time to meet their needs. In Korea, the U.S., the U.K., and China, a mobile phone can be used to pay for day-to-day transactions. A **mobile pay** app can be downloaded on the smartphone in which the user's credit card or debit card is enrolled. Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay all use **near-field communications (NCF) technology** so instead swiping the physical card for payment, the mobile phone is simply tapped on the card reader or terminal and payment is immediately recorded (Savvides, 2017). **Secure** Information should be secure from access by authorized users. Mobile pay system such as Samsung Pay and Apple Pay use **biometric authentication,** typically a fingerprint scan, before a transaction is made. This ensures that only the owner of the phone can use the app for payments. **Value of Information** Information is considered valuable mainly for business purposes as business depend on it to produce quality products and services. This helps organizations become globally competitive and be up to date with the latest trends and technology. With business gearing towards IT automation, the strategy now is to come up with business activities that shorten time frames while increasing productivity. Information, as a resources, has four characteristics, namely it (1) has zero marginal cost; (2) in non-rivalrous; (3) is non-exclusive; and (4) does not exhibit high degrees of transparency (Leickly, 2004). **Zero-marginal cost** The cost of producing the first copy of information good may be substantial, but the cost of producing (or reproducing) additional copies is negligible. ***Avengers:** **Age of Ultron*** released in 2015 is one of the most expensive Hollywood movies ever made with an estimated budget of US\$250,000,000. However, buying a DVD copy of the said movie today would cost about \$20 in Amazon.com. **Non-rivalrous** Simultaneous consumptions of information by consumers is possible. Movies nowadays are sold not only as DVD copies. There are also digital formats which anyone can watch online or download on their mobile devices, either as a rental or paid subscription. **Non-exclusive** Exclusion is not a natural property of information goods, though it is possible to construct exclusion artificially. However the nature of information is that if it is known, it is difficult to exclude others from its use. Through emails and SMS, one can identify only intended recipients of the message through a specific email address or a phone number. However, emails and SMS have the capability of **forwarding** the exact information to other recipients, without the original sender knowing it. This is much more evident in social media such as Facebook, in which a "share" automatically means sending to everyone else. **No transparency** To evaluate the information, the information must be known, so one has no invest in learning how to evaluate it. A programmer undergoing boot camp training to learn a new programming language needs to invest time, money, and effort. The more complicated the training, the more expensive the cost and the longer the time needed to learn it. **Information Economics** Since people have widely different values for a particular piece of information, value-based--pricing leads naturally to differential pricing. In economics, a good is considered to be an **experience good** if consumers must experience it to value it. Virtually any new product is an experience good, and marketers have d3eveloped strategies such as free samples, promotional pricing, and testimonials to help consumers learn about new goods. Information on the other hand, may be treated differently, since it is not the asset that provides value in today's economy: Buying a shirt, customers are given the opportunity to try it on prior to deciding if they want to buy it or not. Imagine you are in a movie theater and you are choosing from two movies to watch. If the movies are to be treated the same way as the shirt, that would mean you need to watch both movies in their entirely before you decide which one is good to watch. The decision would make no sense anymore as you were able to watch both movies anyway. To avoid this situation, organizations use various ***strategies*** to get wary customers to overcome their reluctance to purchase information before they know what they are getting. The tension between giving away your information to let people know what you have to offer and charging them for it to recover you cost, is a fundamental problem in the information economy. These strategies include browsing previews, branding, and reputation. **Browsing previews** An example of this strategy is movie trailers. Movie *trailers* that normally run from 1 to 3 minutes give reviews a glimpse of what the film is all about. Trailers normally include highlights from the film which can leave the audience excited to watch the entire film later on. **Branding** Big names such as Microsoft and Apple have no issues when it comes to launching new products as people have already established their trust on these brands. According to American telecommunications (telco) company, Sprint, when Apple introduced iPhone 7 in September 2016, pre- order sales shot up by 375% compared to the launch of iPhone 6. **Reputation** When a movie is announced, people would often be skeptical if it would be good enough. However, the reputations of the directors and the cast of actors and actresses normally, remove the skepticism. For example, Michael Bay is known for successfully directing the ***Transformers*** movie franchise. This reputation has made his movies blockbuster hits as people have made a connection that if it is a Michael Bay film, it must be good. **Information Overload** Information is now available so quickly, ubiquitously, and inexpensively. Last March 2016, Cisco conducted a study that by the end of 2016, global internet traffic will have reached 1.1 zettabytes per year, and by 2019, global traffic is expected to hit 2 zettabytes per year. Just how big is 1 zettabyte? A typical external drive is 1 terabyte in size. One zettabyte is equal to 1, 000, 000, 00 terabytes or noe million external drives. This is because information is produced at rapidly-increasing rates due to the following reasons: **Easy duplication and transmission of information** A picture posted on Facebook which is also posted on Instagram and Twitter means that the same picture has been posted three times on three different sites. **Increase in communication methods** What used to be mobile phones for SMS and computers for emails are smartphones that can do both. Also, a simple text message is no longer restricted to SMS via telco providers. Through mobile apps such as Viber and Messenger, people can now send private messages (PM) or direct messages (DM). C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Downloads\\it27.jfif  **Figure 4.3** Messaging apps: Messenger and Viber **Growth archives of historical information** Print or hard copies are now being replaced by digital ones. These digital copies are stored capacity for end users. One such example is libraries which contain not only physical books but also computers and other mobile devices to access e-books, e-journals, electronic readings, and other online resources. C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Downloads\\dowit40.jfif **Figure 4.4** Electronic readings So where all this information does comes from? Who and where are these producers and consumers of information? According to the 2018 Global Digital Suite of reports from We Are Social and Hootsuite: - More tha half of the world now uses the internet (up to 7 percent year-on-year). - Qatar and United Arab Emirates top the internet penetration ranking with 99% of their total population using the internet. - For three years in a row, Filipinos have been spending the greatest amoutn of time on social media with an average of four hours a day. - More than two-thirds of the world's population now has a mobile phone, with most people now using smartphones.  **Figure 4.5** Digital around the world in 2018 Cmpared to the year 2017, 2018 has seenv exponential growth in terms of digital information. This could be attributed to the fast growing internet as well as to the latest technological advancements, especially in mobile devices. The infographic above shows the number of internet users, active social media users, unique mobile users, and active mobile social users. The study also highlights how social media has created a big impact on internet usage with Facebook diminating the global social landscape, reaching more than 2 billion users at the start of 2018. This report reveals that while the philippines has one of the slowest fixed internet connections in the world-4.2 Mbps compared to the global average of 6.3 Mbps, the country has one of the fastest mobile connection speed, averaging at 13.9 Mbps.