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Thursday, March 27, 2014

O---LEVEL THEATRE ARTS BY. MWL. JAPHET MASATU.

O--LEVEL THEATRE ARTS.

INTRODUCTION.

For other uses, see Theatre (disambiguation).

"Theatrical" redirects here. For the racehorse, see Theatrical (horse).

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, in 1899

Theatre or theater^[1] is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of design and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience.^[2] The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe").
Modern Western theatre derives in large measure from ancient Greek drama, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre scholar Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing, and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature, and the arts in general.^[3]
Theatre today, broadly defined, includes performances of plays and musicals, ballets, operas and various other forms.

History

Main article: History of theatre

Classical and Hellenistic Greece

A master (right) and his slave (left) in a Greek phlyax play, circa 350/340 BCE

The city-state of Athens is where western theatre originated.^[4] It was part of a broader culture of theatricality and performance in classical Greece that included festivals, religious rituals, politics, law, athletics and gymnastics, music, poetry, weddings, funerals, and symposia.^[5] Participation in the city-state's many festivals—and attendance at the City Dionysia as an audience member (or even as a participant in the theatrical productions) in particular—was an important part of citizenship.^[6] Civic participation also involved the evaluation of the rhetoric of orators evidenced in performances in the law-court or political assembly, both of which were understood as analogous to the theatre and increasingly came to absorb its dramatic vocabulary.^[7] The Greeks also developed the concepts of dramatic criticism, acting as a career, and theatre architecture.^[8] The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of three types of drama: tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play.^[9] The origins of theatre in ancient Greece, according to Aristotle (384–322 BCE), the first theoretician of theatre, are to be found in the festivals that honoured Dionysus.The performances were given in semi-circular auditoria cut into hillsides, capable of seating 10,000–20,000 people. The stage consisted of a dancing floor (orchestra), dressing room and scene-building area (skene). Since the words were the most important part, good acoustics and clear delivery were paramount. The actors (always men) wore masks appropriate to the characters they represented, and each might play several parts.^[10] Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the theatrical culture of the city-state.^[11] Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE (from the end of which it began to spread throughout the Greek world), and continued to be popular until the beginning of the Hellenistic period.^[12] No tragedies from the 6th century BCE and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in during the 5th century BCE have survived.^[13] We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.^[14] The origins of tragedy remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE it was institution alised in competitions (agon) held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysos (the god of wine and fertility).^[15] As contestants in the City Dionysia's competition (the most prestigious of the festivals to stage drama) playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play.^[16] The performance of tragedies at the City Dionysia may have begun as early as 534 BCE; official records (didaskaliai) begin from 501 BCE, when the satyr play was introduced.^[17] Most Athenian tragedies dramatise events from Greek mythology, though The Persians—which stages the Persian response to news of their military defeat at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE—is the notable exception in the surviving drama.^[18] When Aeschylus won first prize for it at the City Dionysia in 472 BCE, he had been writing tragedies for more than 25 years, yet its tragic treatment of recent history is the earliest example of drama to survive.^[19] More than 130 years later, the philosopher Aristotle analysed 5th-century Athenian tragedy in the oldest surviving work of dramatic theory—his Poetics (c. 335 BCE).
Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, "Old Comedy", "Middle Comedy", and "New Comedy". Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes, while Middle Comedy is largely lost (preserved only in relatively short fragments in authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis). New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. Aristotle defined comedy as a representation of laughable people that involves some kind of blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster.^[20]

Roman theatre

Main article: Theatre of ancient Rome

Mosaic depicting masked actors in a play: two women consult a "witch"

Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans. The Roman historian Livy wrote that the Romans first experienced theatre in the 4th century BCE, with a performance by Etruscan actors.^[21] Beacham argues that they had been familiar with "pre-theatrical practices" for some time before that recorded contact.^[22] The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of Plautus's broadly appealing situation comedies, to the high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies of Seneca. Although Rome had a native tradition of performance, the Hellenization of Roman culture in the 3rd century BCE had a profound and energizing effect on Roman theatre and encouraged the development of Latin literature of the highest quality for the stage. The only surviving Roman tragedies, indeed the only plays of any kind from the Roman Empire, are ten dramas- nine of them pallilara- attributed to Lucuis Annaeus Seneca (4 b.c.-65 a.d.), the Corduba-born Stoic philosopher and tutor of Nero.^[23]

Post-classical theatre in the West

This Section may contain improper references to self-published sources. Please help improve it by removing references to unreliable sources, where they are used inappropriately. (August 2012)

Theatre took on many alternate forms in the West between the 15th and 19th centuries, including commedia dell'arte and melodrama. The general trend was away from the poetic drama of the Greeks and the Renaissance and toward a more naturalistic prose style of dialogue, especially following the Industrial Revolution.^[24]
Theatre took a big pause during 1642 and 1660 in England because of Cromwell's Interregnum. Theatre was seen as something sinful and the Puritans tried very hard to drive it out of their society. Because of this stagnant period, once Charles II came back to the throne in 1660 in the Restoration, theatre (among other arts) exploded because of a lot of influence from France, where Charles was in exile the years previous to his reign.
One of the big changes was the new theatre house. Instead of the types in the Elizabethan era that were like the Globe Theatre, round with no place for the actors to really prep for the next act and with no "theater manners,” it transformed into a place of refinement, with a stage in front and somewhat stadium seating in front of it. This way, seating was more prioritized because some seats were obviously better than others because the seating was no longer all the way around the stage. The king would have the best seat in the house: the very middle of the theatre, which got the widest view of the stage as well as the best way to see the point of view and vanishing point that the stage was constructed around. Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg was one of the most influential set designers of the time because of his use of floor space and scenery.
Because of the turmoil before this time, there was still some controversy about what should and should not be put on the stage. Jeremy Collier, a preacher, was one of the heads in this movement through his piece A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. The beliefs in this paper were mainly held by non-theatre goers and the remainder of the Puritans and very religious of the time. The main question was if seeing something immoral on stage effects behavior in the lives of those who watch it, a controversy that is still playing out today.^[25]
The eighteenth century also introduced women to the stage, which was viewed as inappropriate before. These women were looked at as celebrities (also a newer concept, thanks to some ideas on individualism that were beginning to be born in Renaissance Humanism) but on the other hand, it was still very new and revolutionary that they were on the stage and some said they were unladylike and looked down on. Charless II did not like young men playing the parts of young women, so he asked that women play their own parts.^[26] Because women were allowed on the stage, playwrights had more leeway with plot twists like dressing them up as men and narrow escapes of morally sticky situations as forms of comedy.
Comedies were full of the young and very much in vogue, with the storyline following their love lives: commonly a young roguish hero professing his love to the chaste and free minded heroine near the end of the play, much like Sheridan's The School for Scandal. Many of the comedies were fashioned after the French tradition, mainly Molière, again hailing back to the French influence brought back by the King and the Royals after their exile. Molière was one of the top comedic playwrights of the time, revolutionizing the way comedy was written and performed by combining Commedia dell'arte, French comedy and satire to create some of the longest lasting and most influential satiric comedies.^[27] Tragedies were similarly victorious in their sense of righting political power, especially poignant because of the recent Restoration to the Crown.^[28] They were also imitations of French tragedy, although the French had a larger distinction between comedy and tragedy, whereas the English fudged the lines occasionally and put some comedic parts in their tragedies. Common forms of non-comedic plays were sentimental comedies as well as something that would later be called tragedie bourgeoise, the tragedy of common life, were more popular in England because they applied more to the English sensibilities.^[29]
Through the 19th century, the popular theatrical forms of Romanticism, melodrama, Victorian burlesque and the well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou gave way to the problem plays of Naturalism and Realism; the farces of Feydeau; Wagner's operatic Gesamtkunstwerk; musical theatre (including Gilbert and Sullivan's operas); F. C. Burnand's, W. S. Gilbert's and Wilde's drawing-room comedies; Symbolism; proto-Expressionism in the late works of August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen;^[30] and Edwardian musical comedy.
These trends continued through the 20th century in the realism of Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg, the political theatre of Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht, the so-called Theatre of the Absurd of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, American and British musicals, the collective creations of companies of actors and directors such as Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, experimental and postmodern theatre of Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage, the postcolonial theatre of August Wilson or Tomson Highway, and Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed.

Eastern theatrical traditions

Rakshasa or the demon as depicted in Yakshagana, a form of musical dance-drama from India

The first form of Indian theatre was the Sanskrit theatre.^[31] It began after the development of Greek and Roman theatre and before the development of theatre in other parts of Asia.^[31] It emerged sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE and flourished between the 1st century CE and the 10th, which was a period of relative peace in the history of India during which hundreds of plays were written.^[32] Japanese forms of Kabuki, Nō, and Kyōgen developed in the 17th century CE.^[33] Theatre in the medieval Islamic world included puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow plays and marionette productions) and live passion plays known as ta'ziya, where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history. In particular, Shia Islamic plays revolved around the shaheed (martyrdom) of Ali's sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali. Secular plays were known as akhraja, recorded in medieval adab literature, though they were less common than puppetry and ta'ziya theatre.^[34]

Types

Drama

Main article: Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.^[35] The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action", which is derived from the verb δράω, dráō, "to do" or "to act". The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.^[36] The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King (c. 429 BCE) by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama.^[37] A modern example is Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill (1956).^[38]
Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BCE)—the earliest work of dramatic theory.^[39] The use of "drama" in the narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the 19th century. Drama in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov's Ivanov (1887). In Ancient Greece however, the word drama encompassed all theatrical plays, tragic, comic, or anything in between.
Drama is often combined with music and dance: the drama in opera is generally sung throughout; musicals generally include both spoken dialogue and songs; and some forms of drama have incidental music or musical accompaniment underscoring the dialogue (melodrama and Japanese Nō, for example).^[40] In certain periods of history (the ancient Roman and modern Romantic) some dramas have been written to be read rather than performed.^[41] In improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance; performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience.^[42]

Musical theatre

Main article: Musical theatre

Music and theatre have had a close relationship since ancient times—Athenian tragedy, for example, was a form of dance-drama that employed a chorus whose parts were sung (to the accompaniment of an aulos—an instrument comparable to the modern clarinet), as were some of the actors' responses and their 'solo songs' (monodies).^[43] Modern musical theatre is a form of theatre that also combines music, spoken dialogue, and dance. It emerged from comic opera (especially Gilbert and Sullivan), variety, vaudeville, and music hall genres of the late 19th and early 20th century.^[44] After the Edwardian musical comedy that began in the 1890s, the Princess Theatre musicals of the early 20th century, and comedies in the 1920s and 1930s (such as the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein), with Oklahoma! (1943), musicals moved in a more dramatic direction.^[45] Famous musicals over the subsequent decades included My Fair Lady (1956), West Side Story (1957), The Fantasticks (1960), Hair (1967), A Chorus Line (1975), Les Misérables (1980) and The Phantom of the Opera (1986),^[46] as well as more contemporary hits including Rent (1994), The Lion King (1997) and Wicked (2003).
Musical theatre may be produced on an intimate scale Off-Broadway, in regional theatres, and elsewhere, but it often includes spectacle. For instance, Broadway and West End musicals often include lavish costumes and sets supported by multi-million dollar budgets.

Theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy. Mosaic, Roman artwork, 2nd century CE.

Comedy

Main article: Comedy

Theatre productions that use humour as a vehicle to tell a story qualify as comedies. This may include a modern farce such as Boeing Boeing or a classical play such as As You Like It. Theatre expressing bleak, controversial or taboo subject matter in a deliberately humorous way is referred to as black comedy.

Tragedy

Main article: Tragedy

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.

—Aristotle, Poetics^[47]

Aristotle's phrase "several kinds being found in separate parts of the play" is a reference to the structural origins of drama. In it the spoken parts were written in the Attic dialect whereas the choral (recited or sung) ones in the Doric dialect, these discrepancies reflecting the differing religious origins and poetic metres of the parts that were fused into a new entity, the theatrical drama.
Tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilisation.^[48] That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.^[49] From its obscure origins in the theatres of Athens 2,500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Racine, and Schiller, to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of Strindberg, Beckett's modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering, and Müller's postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon, tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change.^[50] In the wake of Aristotle's Poetics (335 BCE), tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, whether at the scale of poetry in general (where the tragic divides against epic and lyric) or at the scale of the drama (where tragedy is opposed to comedy). In the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre.^[51]

Improvisation

Main article: Improvisation

Improvisation has been a consistent feature of theatre, with the Commedia dell'arte in the sixteenth century being recognised as the first improvisation form. Popularized by Nobel Prize Winner Dario Fo and troupes such as the Upright Citizens Brigade improvisational theatre continues to evolve with many different streams and philosophies. Keith Johnstone and Viola Spolin are recognized as the first teachers of improvisation in modern times, with Johnstone exploring improvisation as an alternative to scripted theatre and the American Spolin and her successors exploring improvisation principally as a tool for developing dramatic work or skills or as a form for situational comedy.

Theories of theatre

Main article: Dramatic theory

Village feast with theatre performance circa 1600.

Having been an important part of human culture for more than 2,500 years, theatre has evolved a wide range of different theories and practices. Some are related to political or spiritual ideologies, while others are based purely on "artistic" concerns. Some processes focus on a story, some on theatre as event, and some on theatre as catalyst for social change. The classical Greek philosopher Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BCE) is the earliest-surviving example and its arguments have influenced theories of theatre ever since.^[52] In it, he offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means "making" and in this context includes drama—comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play—as well as lyric poetry, epic poetry, and the dithyramb). He examines its "first principles" and identifies its genres and basic elements; his analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion.^[53] He argues that tragedy consists of six qualitative parts, which are (in order of importance) mythos or "plot", ethos or "character", dianoia or "thought", lexis or "diction", melos or "song", and opsis or "spectacle".^[54] "Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition," Marvin Carlson explains, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions."^[55] Important theatre practitioners of the 20th century include Konstantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jacques Copeau, Edward Gordon Craig, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Augusto Boal, Eugenio Barba, Dario Fo, Keith Johnstone and Robert Wilson (director).
Stanislavski treated the theatre as an art-form that is autonomous from literature and one in which the playwright's contribution should be respected as that of only one of an ensemble of creative artists.^[56] His innovative contribution to modern acting theory has remained at the core of mainstream western performance training for much of the last century.^[57] That many of the precepts of his system of actor training seem to be common sense and self-evident testifies to its hegemonic success.^[58] Actors frequently employ his basic concepts without knowing they do so.^[58] Thanks to its promotion and elaboration by acting teachers who were former students and the many translations of his theoretical writings, Stanislavski's 'system' acquired an unprecedented ability to cross cultural boundaries and developed an international reach, dominating debates about acting in Europe and the United States.^[59] Many actors routinely equate his 'system' with the North American Method, although the latter's exclusively psychological techniques contrast sharply with Stanislavski's multivariant, holistic and psychophysical approach, which explores character and action both from the 'inside out' and the 'outside in' and treats the actor's mind and body as parts of a continuum.^[60]

Technical aspects of theatre

A theater stage building

Main article: Stagecraft

Theatre presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.^[36] The production of plays usually involves contributions from a playwright, director, a cast of actors, and a technical production team that includes a scenic or set designer, lighting designer, costume designer, sound designer, stage manager, and production manager. Depending on the production, this team may also include a composer, dramaturg, video designer or fight director.
Stagecraft is a generic term referring to the technical aspects of theatrical, film, and video production. It includes, but is not limited to, constructing and rigging scenery, hanging and focusing of lighting, design and procurement of costumes, makeup, procurement of props, stage management, and recording and mixing of sound. Stagecraft is distinct from the wider umbrella term of scenography. Considered a technical rather than an artistic field, it relates primarily to the practical implementation of a designer's artistic vision. In its most basic form, stagecraft is managed by a single person (often the stage manager of a smaller production) who arranges all scenery, costumes, lighting, and sound, and organizes the cast. At a more professional level, for example modern Broadway houses, stagecraft is managed by hundreds of skilled carpenters, painters, electricians, stagehands, stitchers, wigmakers, and the like. This modern form of stagecraft is highly technical and specialized: it comprises many sub-disciplines and a vast trove of history and tradition. The majority of stagecraft lies between these two extremes. Regional theatres and larger community theatres will generally have a technical director and a complement of designers, each of whom has a direct hand in their respective designs.

Theatre organization and administration

There are many modern theatre movements which go about producing theatre in a variety of ways.
Theatrical enterprise varies enormously in sophistication and purpose. People who are involved vary from professionals to hobbyists to spontaneous novices. Theatre can be performed with no money at all or on a grand scale with multi-million dollar budgets. This diversity manifests in the abundance of theatre sub-categories, which include:

Repertory companies

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, circa 1821

While most modern theatre companies rehearse one piece of theatre at a time, perform that piece for a set "run", retire the piece, and begin rehearsing a new show, repertory companies rehearse multiple shows at one time. These companies are able to perform these various pieces upon request and often perform works for years before retiring them. Most dance companies operate on this repertory system. The Royal National Theatre in London performs on a repertory system.
Repertory theatre generally involves a group of similarly accomplished actors, and relies more on the reputation of the group than on an individual star actor. It also typically relies less on strict control by a director and less on adherence to theatrical conventions, since actors who have worked together in multiple productions can respond to each other without relying as much on convention or external direction.^[61]

Producing vs. presenting

In order to put on a piece of theatre, both a theatre company and a theatre venue are needed. When a theatre company is the sole company in residence at a theatre venue, this theatre (and its corresponding theatre company) are called a resident theatre or a producing theatre, because the venue produces its own work. Other theatre companies, as well as dance companies, do not have their own theatre venue. These companies perform at rental theatres or at presenting theatres. Both rental and presenting theatres have no full-time resident companies. They do, however, sometimes have one or more part-time resident companies, in addition to other independent partner companies who arrange to use the space when available. A rental theatre allows the independent companies to seek out the space, while a presenting theatre seeks out the independent companies to support their work by presenting them on their stage.
Some performance groups perform in non-theatrical spaces. Such performances can take place outside or inside, in a non-traditional performance space, and include street theatre, and site-specific theatre. Non-traditional venues can be used to create more immersive or meaningful environments for audiences. They can sometimes be modified more heavily than traditional theatre venues, or can accommodate different kinds of equipment, lighting and sets.^[62]
A touring company is an independent theatre or dance company that travels, often internationally, being presented at a different theatre in each city.

Unions

There are many theatre unions including Actors' Equity Association (for actors and stage managers), the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE, for designers and technicians). Many theatres require that their staff be members of these organizations.

1. Computer: Input, Processing, Output, and Storage
In today's world, computers are used for almost every task imaginable. Routine activities such as paying bills, buying groceries, or communicating with a friend can be done with a computer. That is why it is important not only to know how to use a computer, but also to understand the components of a computer and what they do.
Recent studies report that almost 40% of homes surveyed have personal computers, and this number is growing. Given the widespread use of computers, computer literacy - a knowledge and understanding of computers and computer uses - has become an essential ingredient in the recipe for success in today's world. Florida was the first state to demand computer literacy of all students by grade 12.
Collectively, the electric, electronic, and mechanical equipment that makes up a personal computer is called hardware. Devices that surround the system unit (i.e., the keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor, and so on) sometimes are known as peripheral devices.
Computers manipulate (process) data (input) to produce information (output) and hold (store) that information for future use. These operations are completed incredibly quickly. Today's supercomputer can perform 1.8 trillion operations per second. If a person did one arithmetic operation a second without stopping, it would take more than 31,000 years to perform the number of operations a supercomputer can do in one second.

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2. Data and Information
A major part of understanding computers is to know what goes into them (data), what comes out of them (information), and to understand the process of turning data into information, also known as the information processing cycle.
Understanding the difference between data and information is important. Clifford Stoll - lecturer, computer security expert, and author (The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage and Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Superhighway are two of his most popular works) - notes a wide gap between data and information. Information has a pedigree, or lineage. Its source is known, whether a respected professor or a seventh grader. "The Internet has great gobs of data," Stoll maintains, "and little, little information."

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3. Components of the Computer and Their Use
A computer consists of five primary hardware components: input devices, the central processing unit (CPU), memory, output devices, and storage devices. These components work together with software to perform calculations, organize data, and communicate with other computers.
Different types of input devices transmit different types of data or transmit data in different ways. A keyboard is used to transmit alpha/numeric data by typing. In addition to the standard keys in the typing area, an enhanced keyboard contains:

function keys that can be programmed to perform specific tasks
status lights that indicate modes that can be turned on and off by toggle keys (e.g., caps lock and num lock)
a numeric keypad that allows for rapid entry of numbers
arrow keys and other cursor-control keys (e.g., home, end, page up, and page down) that control the on-screen movement of the insertion point
special keys such as esc, shift, ctrl, and alt that have varying functions depending on the software

The mouse, like a trackball or joystick, is called a pointing device because it controls the movement of a pointer, or mouse pointer, on the computer screen. The first mouse was a one-button, rectangle shaped device invented by Doug Engelbart in 1964. A mouse is very easy to use. It requires empty desk space, however, and forces the user to remove a hand from the keyboard to give a command.
Different CPUs function at different speeds. The rate at which computer operations take place is measured in megahertz (MHz), or millions of electronic pulses per second. This rate varies among computers and should be a consideration when purchasing a personal computer. Computers have two basic types of memory. RAM (random access memory) is volatile, meaning that its contents are lost when the computer is turned off. ROM (read-only memory) is nonvolatile because it retains its contents even when the power is turned off. ROM stores information that does not change, such as the instructions and data used to start the computer when it is first turned on.
Like input devices, different types of output devices convey different types of information or convey information in different ways. Printer output sometimes is called hard copy because of its physical, touchable character. Monitor output, on the other hand, is called soft copy because it has only an electronic, intangible existence. Non-impact printers represent the fastest growing segment of the printer market. The drops of ink that form an ink-jet printer character are similar to the dots that form a dot matrix character figure, but there are many more of them. Good quality paper must be used with ink-jet printers so that the ink does not bleed. The speed quoted for impact printers often is measured in characters per second (cps). Like ink-jet printers, laser printer speed is measured in pages per minute (ppm). Although they are fast, all printers are much slower than computers. Because of this, most printers have a buffer that temporarily stores a few pages, allowing the computer to dump output into the buffer and continue processing. The most widely used PC monitors are 14- or 17-inch (measured from one corner to the diagonally opposite corner). With the growing popularity of portable computers, the clarity of LCD displays continues to improve. The quality of a monitor's display depends largely on three factors:

resolution - the number of pixels displayed
dot pitch - the distance between pixels
refresh rate - the speed with which images are redrawn on the screen

Storage devices are different from memory. Memory, sometimes called primary storage, is fast, short-term, volatile, and relatively expensive. Storage devices, on the other hand, are slower, long-term, nonvolatile, and less expensive.

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4. Floppy Disks and Hard Disks
The data and information used in a computer needs to be stored for future use. The memory of a computer only holds items temporarily while they are being processed. When not being processed, these items must be stored in auxiliary storage devices. These devices include floppy disks, hard disks, CD-ROM, and DVD-ROM. When selecting a storage device it is important to know that each device holds different amounts of information.
Although floppy disks once were available in two sizes, the 5.25-inch floppy disk rarely is used today, and some believe it is destined for the same fate as the eight-track tape. Because of its rigid plastic shell, it may be difficult to see the 3.5-inch disk as "floppy." The name is justified, however, not only by the disk's ancestry but also by the flexible character of the disk itself. When a floppy disk drive is reading from or writing to a floppy disk, a light turns on next to the drive. Floppy disks never should be inserted into or removed from the drive when this light is on. Most magnetic disks are read/write storage media. Some optical discs, such as CD-ROMs, usually can be read from but not written to. Each track on a formatted floppy disk is very narrow. To see how narrow, try to draw 80 lines in a 11/4-inch space (the approximate radius of the floppy disk surface). Floppy disks are soft-sectored, meaning that the number of sectors is not predetermined. Floppy disk access time depends on the time needed to locate the correct track, the time required to rotate the disk to the proper sector, and the time necessary to transfer the data into main memory.
Although personal computer hard disks usually are fixed (i.e., not removable), some portable computers have removable hard disk drives. Unlike floppy disks, hard disks constantly are spinning, at a rate 10 to 20 times faster than floppy disks. Therefore, access time for hard disks is significantly less than access time for floppy disks. While a floppy disk read/write head rests on the disk, the read/write head for a hard disk hovers about 10 millionths of an inch above the disk surface. Contamination on the disk - a speck of dust (about 1550 millionths of an inch), a fingerprint (about 600 millionths of an inch), or a particle of smoke (about 250 millionths of an inch) - can cause a "head crash," destroying data and rendering the disk drive unusable. For this reason, hard disk drives are sealed and manufactured in an environment that typically is cleaner than a hospital operating room. Storage capacity can be increased on both hard disks and floppy disks with compression programs such as Stacker, WinZip, or PKZIP.

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5. Computer Software: System Software and Application Software
There are two categories of computer software: system software and application software. System software serves as the interface between a user and the computer's hardware. An example of system software would be an operating system such as Microsoft Windows. Application software consists of programs designed to perform specific tasks. An example of application software would be a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel.
A 3.5-inch floppy disk is computer hardware, but the programs stored on it are computer software. Although there are two types of software, system software and application software are designed to work hand-in-glove; that is, application software packages are designed to work with specific kinds of system software. By telling the computer how to perform common functions, the operating system frees application software to concentrate on producing information. Popular operating systems include Windows, the Mac OS, OS/2, UNIX, Linux, DOS, and NetWare. Operating systems that have a graphical user interface (GUI) often are called user-friendly. Studies have found that GUI users generally complete tasks more accurately, work faster, are more productive, and feel less fatigue.
To understand the relationship between application software and system software, draw four concentric circles. Label the innermost circle CPU, the next operating system, the next application software, and the last user. The resultant diagram illustrates how the operating system helps to insulate the user and application program from computer hardware.

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6. Types of Personal Computer Application Software
Many types of application software are available. The more popular application software includes word processing software, electronic spreadsheet software, database software, presentation graphics software, communications software, and electronic mail software. Knowing the function of each type of application software is one of the most important ingredients of being computer literate.
Several years ago, a survey of large and small businesses showed that the most often used applications were:

Word processing and spreadsheet (used by 100% of those surveyed)
Communications, electronic mail, database, and presentation graphics (used by about 95%)
Desktop publishing (used by about 85%)
Project management (used by about 70%)
Personal information management (used by about 50%)

In word processing, any work developed through the writing process is a document. Word processing software makes it easier to create, edit, format, and print documents. Many word processing packages include a spell checker, grammar checker, and thesaurus.
The first spreadsheet software, VisiCalc, was introduced in 1979. By immediately displaying the results of changes, electronic spreadsheet packages provide a capability called what-if analysis. Another powerful capability, called goal-seek, finds what value is needed to reach a specified goal.
A database file is a collection of related data called records, each of which consists of a group of related facts called fields. The data can be manipulated, or a report, called a query, can be created based on user-specified criteria. Although most spreadsheet packages can manage data tables of a few thousand records, database software can efficiently handle much larger data tables.
Word processing and spreadsheet software came out around 1980. Presentation graphics software was not introduced until the mid to late 1980s. Nevertheless, it can be argued that presentation graphics software has had almost as great an impact on business, and on how people do business, as either of the older applications. Presentation graphics packages include libraries of clip art that can be inserted into slides and a slide sorter that can be used to organize the order effectively in which slides are presented.

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7. Computer Communications Channels and Equipment and the Internet and World Wide Web
Communicating with a computer is becoming the standard today for both business and personal use. The communications channels are constantly being upgraded in order to send information faster. Communications technologies have changed the way people interact through the use of e-mail, videoconferencing, and the Internet.
Many vendors sell network versions of their software. The network version resides on the network server and can be accessed by each computer on the network. When a network version is purchased, a site license is obtained from the vendor. The fee for the site license, usually based on the number of computers on the network, is less than the purchase of individual packages for each computer.
The number of people using the Internet is growing by 5% each month. Paul Moritz, a vice president at Microsoft, maintains that, "In the long run, it's hard to exaggerate the importance of the Internet." The Web, an innovation of Tim Berners-Lee, debuted in 1989. Since then, the Web has experienced astounding growth. Some experts claim that the size of the Web doubles every 60 days. Using links to move from one document to another often is called surfing the Web. Two popular Web browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

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8. How to Purchase, Install, and Maintain a Computer
At some point in your life, you will probably decide to purchase a computer. Aside from understanding the components discussed earlier, it also is important to be able to find the computer that best fits your needs. For example, most new computers come with application software already installed. If you do not use this software, then it is of no value even though you got it for "free." There are several things to look for when purchasing a new computer. If possible, speak to someone who is familiar with the purchasing process and can guide you along.
For most people, buying a computer is an expensive experience. Despite this, many people are woefully uninformed when they set out to purchase a computer. Although desktop computer systems remain popular, since 1993 sales of laptop, notebook, and smaller computers have rivaled sales of larger systems, partly because of their enhanced capabilities and increased use by field sales forces. Be careful when setting up a computer system. Failure to follow health guidelines can lead to painful, and even permanent, disabilities. Government studies indicate repetitive stress disorder (RSI) and cumulative trauma disorder (CTD), the most commonly reported problems associated with prolonged keyboard use, are responsible for half of work-related illnesses. Computer security is an increasingly important issue. A survey of American companies with more than 200 personal computers showed that over 60% had suffered at least one virus attack. Two of the major sources of viruses, free software and illegally copied software, more commonly are used by small companies and private individuals, so the percentage of PC users affected by viruses may be much higher. E-mail attachments have been the carriers of several recent virus attacks that have infected both business and home computer users.

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9. E-Commerce
Conducting business online is known as electronic commerce, or e-commerce, and includes such commercial activities as shopping and investing. The three types of e-commerce that exist today are business to consumer (B2C), consumer to consumer (C2C), and business to business (B2B).
If you have access to a computer, an Internet connection, and a means to pay for products or services, you can participate in e-commerce. Today, users can participate in e-commerce not only through desktop computers, but also through mobile devices such as laptop and handheld computers, pagers, and cellular phones. M-commerce (mobile commerce) is the term some people use to describe e-commerce activities that take place using mobile devices.
The more popular uses of e-commerce include shopping and investing. On the Web, you can buy and sell stocks, order flowers, purchase groceries and airline tickets, and even buy a car!
Three types of e-commerce exist: business to consumer (B2C), consumer to consumer (C2C), and business to business (B2B). Of the three, most e-commerce takes place between businesses, making B2B e-commerce transactions the most common.