Questão número 636503

Read the text below in order to answer questions 14 to 15.

Software

A substantial proportion of information can be digitized. It seems likely that soon, for example, any type of information that can be perceived, i.e. seen, heard, felt, smelt or tasted, will be reducible to a collection of bits. Once in digital form, the information in question can be stored, processed and displayed by a computer. Furthermore, it can readily and rapidly be transmitted from one computer to any other computer regardless of distance, political frontiers, and physical obstacles. From a digital point of view, there is absolutely no distinction between text, sounds, graphics, photographs, music, animations, videos and…software. To include software in our list, however, may seem rather odd. Why this is so? Computer programs are, after all, only digitized information like the other examples. However, there is one vital difference between software and the rest. While text, sounds, graphics, as well as the other examples given above, are generally passive in nature, software, by contrast, is essentially active. It is information with attitude! As Hart reminds us, "Computer programs are not only texts: they also behave". Software is both form and substance, both symbolic and functional, it both "is" and "does". For this reason, software is conceptually very challenging.

The text explores

• A. a hardware-oriented world.
• B. software-user's manuals.
• C. the political implications of digital information.
• D. the current intellectual property laws.
• E. the curious nature of software.