ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION

As a rule, factories process materials, offices process words, and data are processed in both factories and offices. When IBM introduced its first electronic typewriter – „Selectric‟, in 1964, little did they realize that it would become the precursor of revolutionary changes in communication capability of the organizations, groups, and individuals. Personal Computers (PCs) were introduced in the 1970s and were initially thought to be good toys that companies were giving away to managers to play around but, with the advent of technology of building networks of PCs and integrating them with communication technology around the mid-1980s, it is changing the way of doing business in the twenty-first century. The vast strides in business electronics have had a profound impact on the way people communicate and send/receive information across companies, countries, and continents.
The advancement in computer-centric technologies has made communication travel faster, safer and almost free from distortions during transmission. Possibilities of misrepresentation are negligible although there are still some unresolved issues of security, hacking, etc. Electronic communication has brought in revolutionary changes in written communication. More important tools and techniques of electronic communication that have impacted on written communication, described in this Unit, are:
1. Word Processing
2. Electronic Mail and SMS from Mobile Phones
3. Electronic Meeting System (EMS)
4. Facsimile Transmission or Fax Machines
5. Teletext and Videotext
6. Imaging
7. Optical Scanning
8. Desktop Publishing (DTP)
9. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
10. Blogs