The term innovative (a derivative of Innovation) refers to changes in thinking, in things,
in processes or in services. Invention that gets out in to the world is innovation. In many fields, something new must be substantially different to be
innovative, not an The goal of innovation is positive change, to make someone or something better.
Innovation is an important topic in the study of economics, business, technology, sociology, and engineering. Colloquially, the word
"innovation" is often used as synonymous with the output of the process. Since innovation is also considered a major driver of the economy,
the factors that lead to innovation are also considered to be critical to policy makers.
In computer science, Data is anything in a form suitable for use with a computer.
Data is often distinguished from programs. A program is a set of instructions that
detail a task for the computer to perform. In this sense,
data is thus everything that is not program code. In general, data refers to a collection
of organised information, usually the result of experience, observation or experiment, other information within a
computer system, or a set of premises. This may consist of numbers, words, or images, particularly as measurements or observations of a set
of variables. In computer science, data is anything in a form suitable for use with a computer. Data is often distinguished from programs.
A program is a set of instructions that detail a task for the computer to perform. In this sense, data is thus everything that is not program code.
In an alternate usage, binary files (which are not human-readable) are sometimes called "Data", as
distinguished from human-readable "text". The total amount of digital data in 2007 was estimated to be 281 billion gigabytes.
The word data is the Latin plural of datum, neuter past participle of dare, "to give", hence "something given". The past participle of "to give"
has been used for millennia, in the sense of a statement accepted at face value; one of the works of Euclid, circa 300 BC, was the Dedomena
(in Latin, Data). In discussions of problems in geometry, mathematics, engineering, and so on, the terms givens and data are used interchangeably.
Such usage is the origin of data as a concept in computer science: data are numbers, words, images, etc., accepted as they stand. Pronounced dey-tuh,
dat-uh, or dah-tuh.
Raw data is a collection of numbers, characters, images or other outputs from devices to convert physical quantities into symbols, in a very broad
sense. Such data is typically further processed by a human or input into a computer, stored and processed there, or transmitted (output) to another
human or computer. Raw data is a relative term; data processing commonly occurs by stages, and the "processed data" from one stage may be considered
the "raw data" of the next.
Mechanical computing devices are classified according to the means by which they represent data. An analog computer represents a datum as a
voltage, distance, position, or other physical quantity. A digital computer represents a datum as a sequence of symbols drawn from a fixed
alphabet. The most common digital computers use a binary alphabet, that is, an alphabet of two characters, typically denoted "0" and "1".
More familiar representations, such as numbers or letters, are then constructed from the binary alphabet.
Some special forms of data are distinguished. A computer program is a collection of data, which can be interpreted as instructions. Most
computer languages make a distinction between programs and the other data on which programs operate, but in some languages, notably Lisp
and similar languages, programs are essentially indistinguishable from other data. It is also useful to distinguish metadata, that is, a
description of other data. A similar yet earlier term for metadata is "ancillary data." The prototypical example of metadata is the library
catalog, which is a description of the contents of books. Experimental data refers to data generated within the context of a scientific
investigation by observation and recording.
Fundamentally, computers follow the instructions they are given. A set of instructions to perform a given task (or tasks) is called a "program".
In the nominal case, the program, as executed by the computer, will consist of binary machine code. The elements of storage manipulated by the
program, but not actually executed by the CPU, contain data.
Typically, different files are used to store programs vs data. Executable files contain programs; all other files are data files. However,
executable files may also contain data which is "built-in" to the program. In particular, some executable files have a data segment,
which nominally contains constants and initial values (both data).
For example: A user might first instruct the operating system to load a word processor program from one file, and then edit a document
stored in another file. In this example, the document would be considered data. If the word processor also features a spell checker,
then the dictionary (word list) for the spell checker would also be considered data. The algorithms used by the spell checker to suggest
corrections would be considered code.
Relative sites:
Mobile (Cell) Phones,
Mobile phone features,
Cell Phone Usage,
Cell Phone Business Models,
History of Cell Phones,
3G,
History of the Telephone,
History of the Telephone Controversy Debate and Patents,
Global Data Services,
EU Data Services
Source References and additional reading:
- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
- Webopedia. Retrieved on 2007-03-19.
- Wikipedia.org, the free encyclopedia
