MIS 2000

Chapter 1 - Why MIS?

- Initial Case talks about Falcon Security, a drone company

- Should Mateo manufacture drones? How many employees, what’s the cost of
training, etc.
- Information technology is a primary driver of corporate profitability
- technology has completely changed businesses
- Information Age (1970s): ​where economy is driven by production, distribution, and
control of information

Some laws that are changing the digital environment:

- Bell’s Law:​ a new computer class needs to be established every decade
- Exponential change in technology
- Moore’s Law:​ “the number of transistors per square inch on an integrated chip doubles
every 18 months” in other words, the performance of a computer doubles every 48
months
- The cost of data processing is approaching zero
- Figure 1-1: In 1996, when the Internet started to take off, a standard CPu cost
about $110 per million transistors, now it’s $0.07 per million transistors
-
- Metcalfe’s Law:​ ​“​the value of a network is equal to the square of the number of users
connected to it”
- The more users connected to a network, the more valuable it will be
- Google’s Project Loon: bring Internet access on the plant using a network of
inflated balloons floating around the world
- Nielsen’s Law: ​network connection speeds for high-end users will increase by 50
percent per year
- The speed of the network will change the way we use digital devices on top of
the number of users on that network
- Kryder’s Law​: the storage density of magnetic disks is increasing at an exponential rate
Marketable Skills:
- Strong nonroutine cognitive skills
- Ex: abstract reasoning, systems thinking, collaboration, ability to experiment
What is MIS?
- MIS: ​management information systems:
- The management and use of information systems that help organizations achieve
their strategies
- Information System:​ assembly of hardware, software, data, procedures and
people that produces in formation
- Information Technology: ​refers to the products, methods, inventions, and
standards used for the purpose of producing information
- You can buy IT but not IS. IT drives the development of new IS. Once your new
information system is up and running, it must be managed and used effectively in
order to achieve the organization’s overall strategy = MIS
- Three main elements in the definition of MIS: ​management and use, information
systems, and strategies
Components of an Information System:
- System: ​is a group of components that interact to achieve some purpose
- Information System: ​group of components that interacts to produce information
- What are these components?

Five-Component Framework

- When we automate a business task, we take work that people are doing by following
procedures and move it so that computers will do that work, following instructions in
software
- Computer Hardware: ​electronic components that input, process, output, store and
communicate data according to the computer programs
- Software: ​instructions for computers
- Data:​ recorded facts or figures
- Procedures: ​instructions for humans
- People: ​those who operate/service the computers, maintain the data and support the
networks. Information only exists in the mind of people

Management and Use ​of IS:

- Systems must be maintained because business is dynamic
- Backing up data
- Protecting the security of the system and data
- System recovery

Achieving Strategies:
- Information systems exist to help people who work in an organization to achieve the
strategies of that business
 - Your quality of your thinking is what determines the quality of the information that is
produced

High Tech vs Low-Tech Info Systems:

- Google Searches for a Better Future in Alphabet:

- Google was announced as a subsidiary of an overarching company named Apple
- Founders reduced their involvement
- Each project had turned into a standalone company with a CEO

Information:
- Knowledge derived from data (recorded facts or figures)
- Information is data present in a meaningful context
- We must do something to data to produce information, summing, ordering, averaging,
grouping, comparing, etc.
- A difference that makes a difference

- Critical data characteristics:

- Accurate​:
- Always be skeptical with a new information system, cross-check
- Timely
- Relevant (to context, to subject)
- Just sufficient
- Don’t need extra details
- Worth its cost

Kant’s Categorical Imperative:

- one should behave only in a way that one would want the behavior to be a universal law