Business Skills for Engineers and Technologists

7

Information technology and electronic commerce

Summary

Information technology is increasingly important in everything we do. This chapter should indicate to you what skills you will need to have, and what you will use them for, in order to use IT effectively.

It begins with a survey of the changes that IT is producing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and the social and legal results of these changes. There follow sections on the use of the most common operating system functions followed by the major applications used for text, number and general data processing, and applications more specifically used by engineers. The chapter concludes with a section on the technology and use of the Internet and the growth of e-commerce.