L E C T U R E 1

I N T R O D U C T I O N

I N T 2 0 6 5

F O U N D AT I O N S O F
I N F O R M AT I O N &
C O M M U N I C AT I O N
T E C H N O L O G I E S
( I C T )
 • What is ICT?

• Why study ICT?

• How will you put ICT

into action?

• ICT on the world

stage

• ICT and our society

• How will ICT improve

your life?
CONTENTS
W H AT I S I C T ? push by the evolution of
electronic

• ICTs are defined as tools that facilitate communication,

and the processing and transmission of information,
and the sharing of knowledge by electronic means
– e.g. DTV, PC, Tablet, smartphone, electronic-based
media and the Internet
- speeding up daily

• ICT is a cross-discipline applied science. It converges

Computer Sciences, Networking, and Management. It
has impacts on many other areas, e.g., Economics,
Sociology, Education, Psychology, etc.
WHY STUDY ICT?
• (Why not?)

• (Graduation credits required, the ‘STEM’ option, …)

• Some positive suggestions:

– Increase professional productivity
– Diversify scholarly knowledge
– Develop skills to engineer innovations
– Increase employment and earning potential
– …
EVOLUTION OF
COMPUTERS
 -
electronic product in
computer

Y
HISTORY IN BRIEF

"
• First generation – used vacuum tubes 真

>
空管 &
• Next generation – replaced vacuum tubes
with transistors 電晶體/ “原子粒”
Large scale Integration
• 1960s – integrated circuits 集積電路 (LSI,
VLSI, ULSI, … 超大形集積電路)
( Large"
Very ultra Large

• 1971 – microprocessor 微處理器

1

• 1970s and 1980s – the personal Early day’s computer was bulky Why Windows
computer (pc) gained popularity system drive is C:?
Where are nad disk
A: & B: ?
historical aspect
 TRENDS THEORIES
• Moore’s “Law”: For every 18 months, cuts cost down 50%, or boosts capacity up
50%
– Although Electronic / Light speed is constant, shrinking the circuit distance speeds up the
processing (in orders of magnitude)

• My perspective: The Need for Speed!

• Electronics: IC – calculator; (Calculation no more mechanical)
&
do th • Serial: CPU – PC; (One instruction at a time. Speeding up since circuits are sunk in
step
step by distance, in 10X per gen)

u
• (Recently) Parallel: (Many instructions at a time)
TPU >
-
Each (PUcontainmutiple Cores Each core contain 2 threads

instruction • Multiple CPUs & Cores & Threads, Multi-tasking (e.g., Time Sharing)
many - work like I computer

detatimemarstribute
• GPU, TPU (TensorFlow), “IPU” (Intelligence) (AI prediction)

you • Quantum computer (test out all possibilities and combinations, should be accurate)
agents
What are the impacts of ever speeding up our daily life?
 ICT ON THE
W O R L D STAG E
HOW WILL YOU PUT ICT INTO ACTION?
• ICT on the world stage • ICT is not just:
– How can becoming proficient with ICT – A means for career advancement
help you understand and participate in – A skill set needed to survive in society
important issues in the world at large?
– Technologies advancements reduce the
• ICT and our society costs:

– How can knowledge of ICT help you • The manufacturing costs.

influence the direction our society takes? • The Information costs

• ICT can provide ways you can make an

impact
AT L A R G E
• Accelerating change around the world

• Stimulating people in new ways

• Prediction is always constrained by perception. Yet

there were many technological breakthroughs!

• An example is Malthus’ “Theory of Population Trap” 馬

爾薩斯 人口論. However, our world population grew
to 8b in 2022 was contributed by the invention of
fertilizer.
POLITICAL ISSUES

• Social networking tools enable groups to

connect and exchange ideas

• Crisis-mapping tools collect and map

information and make it publicly available
GLOBAL ISSUES
• Health care
– Better and more efficient health care services
– Prosthetics

• Environment
– Data could alert scientists to new trends
OUR PERCEPTION & THINKING
• Web Evolution
– Web 0: Texts only with HTML
– Web 1: Unicode Texts in styles, Graphics, Pictures, Audios, Videos with HTML, CSS, JS
– Web 2: Dynamic content connecting with Databases
– Web 3:
• Semantic web, data embedded.
• Block Chained web, decentralized finance & virtual economies
– Web 4: AI web? Ask for answers instead of Search for answers.

• New set of features and functionality

• International collaboration

• Cognitive Surplus
– Combination of leisure time and tools to be creative
SOCIAL CONNECTION
• Distance – Local vs Global:
– Music (virtual choir)
– Business (Kickstarter, Crowdfunding)
ECONOMICS
& CONSUMPTIONS
• Changing mode of Payment, Ownership, Costing, and Perception of
Lifecycle
– Product vs service, buy vs hire, price vs rent, fixed cost vs variable cost,
long-term vs short-term
– E.g. Uber, Bike sharing, Cloud computing

• Marketing strategies
– Widespread adoption of QR (quick response) codes
– Link with web services. URL-driven: payment for product/services, ordering
food, even alms (to beggars), etc.

• Location-aware price comparison tools

• Mobile coupons

• Crowdsourcing
 IMPROVE YOUR LIFE?
• ICT at home
– What does it mean to be computer literate 處理能力?
• Understanding capabilities and limitations of computers

• Knowing how to use computers safely and efficiently

– How does being computer literate make you a smart

computer user and consumer?

• ICT and your career

– How can becoming computer literate help you in a

career?
 P R I VAT E & P U B L I C
At Home At Work
• Avoiding hackers and viruses • Management and processing of
information
• Protecting your privacy
– Data mining – process of searching
• Understanding the real risks huge amounts of data for patterns
– ChatGPT – A way of using AI to retrieve
• Using the web wisely
and organize data in form of dialogue
• Avoiding online annoyances
• Automatic retrieval of information
• Maintain, upgrade, and troubleshoot
• Perform your job more effectively &
efficiently

• Lifecycle consideration: Buy, use, and trashing • Easily and quickly react to the next
computing devices round of new technologies. Actively
adapt to changes
• Health risk: Develop a good habit of using
computer for your health in the long run

• System risk: Learn to protect your data against

system failure

• Information risk: Also protect your valuable

information assets against malwares and hackers
E X PLOR E T E C H NO LO GY C A RE E RS
• Software and apps • IT consulting
– Development for Consumer – Supporting

• Technology equipment • System Integration & Migration

– Manufacturing – Enterprise infrastructure development

• IT departments • Web marketing and social media

– Administration, support & management – E-tailing

• Technology service and repair • Data storage, retrieval, and analysis

– Maintenance – Big Data, Business Analytics

• Technology sales • Information and system security

– Marketing – Risk management

• …
YO U R C A R E E R I N E D U C AT I O N
• Learning Management System (LMS) / Course management software
– Web-based training with e-Book and multi-media, e.g. videos, audios
– Students can: Check progress, Take tests, Forum messaging, etc.
– e.g. Blackboard, Moodle, Google Classroom, eClass, etc.

• Research tool
– Excel, R, SAS, SPSS

• Simulations and instructional software

– MATLAB

• Virtual tour websites

– Google Earth
THE FUTURE OF
ICT
THE MEGA TRENDS IN ICT
• Internet of Things (IoT) 物聯網 / Embedded computers 內置/工控

• Virtual / Augment Reality (VR/AR) 虛擬實景 擴增實景

• Robotics

• AI (obviously, the dominant trend)

IOT / EMBEDDED COMPUTERS

• Internet of Things (IoT)

– Processors are embedded in many
products (smart devices), which
communicate via the Internet or
wireless networks

• Embedded computers
– Have a specific purpose
– Small and have limited hardware
but enhance the capabilities of
everyday devices
A NETWORK OF
SMART DEVICES
1. Microcontroller (e.g. Arduino, ESP8266)
2. Small Board Computer (SBC, e.g. Raspberry Pi, palm
sized), that can communicate with each other and
exchange data. Facilitating with Cloud can scale up the
effect and impact.
• The things can be any device node uses sensor(s) to capture ESP8266
data of the target(s) / scene in focus. This loosely defined
term can be hardware device, software, data, or even a Arduino
Nano
service.
• Before feeds back to the collector / server through the
network, if there have some primary processing / real time
response, it is called Edge /Fog Computing (comparing with
Cloud's one).
Raspberry Pi
SOME SENSORS – FOR SIMPLE EXPERIMENTS
 Pump Model to demonstrate
Sensors Of Vibration & Heat
IOT EXAMPLE IN HK:
SINO GROUP 信和集團
PUMP
MAINTENANCE
• Problem
– Aged pump breaks and floods the floor

• Solution: Co-op with a start-up in IOT

business

• Advantages
– Performance monitoring
– Anomality alert
– Collect data to analysis causes
– Experience formalizing
– Lengthen pump life
– Reduce urgent maintenance frequency
and labor costs
 Meta
Quest 3
VR/AR
• Virtual Reality (VR) - The use of computers to simulate a real
or imagined environment that appears as a three-
dimensional (3-D) space.
– e.g., Meta Oculus (for gaming and Metaverse social interaction),
Pico 4 Apple Vision Pro
• Augmented Reality (AR) - A type of VR that uses an image of
an actual place or things that adds digital information to it.
– e.g. MS HoloLens
E X P LO R E T H E I M PACT O F V R / AR
• With the increased use of VR/AR, surgeons have
the capacity to "see" into a patient's body before
even making a single cut.

• Medical students can learn the field by practicing

risk-free on virtual patients in a 3D environment.

• Psychiatrists can treat conditions such as post-

traumatic stress disorder without the increased use
of pharmaceuticals.
ROBOTICS ENHANCE PRODUCTIVITY
• Useful in situations where it is impractical, dangerous, or
inconvenient to use a human Exo-Skeleton

• Robotic arms and cameras can assist surgeons

– 無/微創手術, Intuitive Surgical’s DaVinci Surgery System. 2018
NISI 香港無創外科有限公司 開發 外科手術機械人系統移除直腸腫
瘤.)
– e.g., Boston Dynamics Atlas
– e.g., Ecosystem Hacking. Direct the bees’ traffic patterns by
dancing: Hiveopolis
 R O B O T I C A G R I C U LT U R E I M PA C T S :
• Efficiency – 24*7*365, nX > human

• Lower costs – plantation, storage, logistic, management,

labor, etc. (since elderly society - reducing labor demand)

• Paradigm shift in farming - From massive to granular,

standardization of planting for robots - GPS tagged, straight-
line aligned, from 3D sphere to 2.5D circle in shape

• Speed up the R&D in agricultural machinery for different

terrains
 DISCOVER USES FOR AI
• The technological use of logic and prior experience to simulate human intelligence

• Some applications of AI

– Speech recognition / Natural Language Processing:

• e.g., Dictation, Commanding (Digital Assistant), Translation, Conversation (FAQ Chatbot))

– Virtual reality, e.g., A learning opponent in a game

– Logical reasoning, e.g., Fraud detection
– Creative responses, e.g., In the Go chess competitions, AI defeated human champions in novel moves

– Game cheating/hacking
• e.g., Memory-hack (unlimited coins, lives, ammo, points), Aim/Trigger Bot, Emulated Input Devices,
Computer Vision, etc.
• Found 50K+ such cheaters in a popular game.

– Gen-AI (never-repeat & ending) game world

• Startups employing generative-AI models, like ChatGPT, are using them to create characters that don’t
rely on scripts but, instead, converse with you freely. Others are experimenting with Non-Player
Characters (NPCs) who appear to have entire interior worlds, and who can continue to play even when
you, the player, are not around to watch. Eventually, generative AI could create game experiences that
are infinitely detailed, twisting and changing every time you experience them.
ONE MORE
THING…
A P P LY A N A C C O U N T F R O M O C I O
Overview

There is a web server being maintained by OCIO to provide Personal Web Pages service to the EdUHK
community. Being a EdUHK staff/student you can apply for a computer account on UNIX server to publish
your own personal web pages. It is the responsibility of the users to ensure that the contents of his/her
home pages are appropriate and do not incur anger or inconvenience to anyone/organizations

• Publishing Web Pages in EdUHK

• Web Authoring

• Setting Up Web Access Counters

• UNIX Command Quick Reference

• More Reference Resources

https://www.eduhk.hk/ocio/personal-web-pages