Business depends upon communication, and communication has come a long way since the days of the town crier or the Pathé News Reel. Mobile phones and the Internet dominate modern communication, and even newspapers totally depend on information technology.

Mobile phones
Twenty years ago, mobile phones were uncommon, bulky brick-like objects shouted into by people who worked in banking. Now they are ubiquitous. In 2005 mobile phone companies sold 200 million handsets and around the world it is reckoned that there are more than a billion users.

Mobile phones work by sending and receiving voice data in the form of radio waves to a base station which in turn is connected to the worldwide telephone network. The user’s handset constantly listens for the nearest base station that has the strongest signal. In this way calls can be made while the user is on the move. Phones are becoming smaller and more powerful, able to take digital images, connect to the Internet and even become portable music libraries.

Internet
The Internet has revolutionized business and commerce. It is the name given to the worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that is accessible by the public, carrying a huge range of information and services, including e-mail, online chat and the world wide web. You wouldn’t be reading this without the Internet! Almost every company now has its own website, and an increasing amount of business is done over the Internet.

Twenty years ago the Internet was virtually unknown; now, it is estimated that almost $10 trillion worth of business will have been done online in 2005. The best-know Internet auction site, eBay, sold more than $10 billion of goods last year.

Newspapers
Today’s newspaper reporter is less likely to have a notepad and pencil than a digital voice recorder and laptop computer. When the story has been written, it is sent directly to a sub-editor’s computer, who will give the story a headline and put it into its appropriate spot on the image of the page.

The entire content of the newspaper is laid out on a computer screen and once the pages have been finalized their images are etched on to thin aluminium plates by a process called photolithography. These plates are then wrapped around cylindrical rollers, ink is applied and the paper – newsprint – is fed through at great speed. The paper is then automatically cut into pages and folded to create the newspaper. Printing presses can be several stories high, cost tens of millions of dollars and can produce tens of thousands of copies of newspapers in an hour.