science

Information appliance

Information appliance is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Information appliance rather than just read about it. In short: An information appliance (IA) is an appliance that is designed to easily perform a specific electronic function such as playing music, photography, or editing text. Typical examples are smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs).

Key takeaways

Information appliance belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Information appliance to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Information appliance from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

An information appliance (IA) is an appliance that is designed to easily perform a specific electronic function such as playing music, photography, or editing text. Typical examples are smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Information appliances partially overlap in definition with, or are sometimes referred to as, smart devices, embedded systems, mobile devices or wireless devices.

Appliance vs computer The term information appliance was coined by Jef Raskin around 1979. As later explained by Donald Norman in his influential The Invisible Computer, the main characteristics of IA, as opposed to any normal computer, were:

designed and pre-configured for a single application (like a toaster appliance, which is designed only to make toast), so easy to use for untrained people, that it effectively becomes unnoticeable, "invisible" to them, able to automatically share information with any other IAs. This definition of IA was different from today's. Jef Raskin initially tried to include such features in the Apple Macintosh, which he designed, but eventually the project went a quite different way. For a short while during the mid- and late 1980s, there were a few models of simple electronic typewriters with screens and some form of memory storage. These dedicated word processor machines had some of the attributes of an information appliance, and Raskin designed one of them, the Canon Cat. He described some properties of his definition of information appliance in his book The Humane Interface. Larry Ellison, Oracle Corporation CEO, predicted that information appliances and network computers would supersede personal computers (PCs).

See also Archy Computer appliance Embedded system Internet appliance Mobile web Technological convergence Ubiquitous computing Smart speaker

References

External links

Compact HTML for Small Information Appliances — W3C NOTE (9 February 1998)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Information appliance

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Information appliance claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Information appliance before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Information appliance ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Information appliance

In research: Information appliance appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Information appliance in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Information appliance is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Information appliances, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Information appliance outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Information appliance in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Information appliance means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Information appliance out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Information appliance in simple terms?

Why does Information appliance matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Information appliance?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Information appliance.