Então, o que exatamente é tecnologia da informação? A TI é essencialmente o uso de tecnologia digital, como computadores na Internet, para armazenar e processar dados em informações úteis. O setor de TI se refere a todo o escopo de todos os empregos e recursos relacionados às tecnologias de computação na sociedade. E há muitos tipos diferentes de empregos nesse campo. Desde engenheiros de rede, que garantem que os computadores possam se comunicar entre si, até técnicos de hardware que substituem e reparam componentes, até a equipe de suporte da área de trabalho, que garante que os usuários finais possam usar seu software adequadamente. Mas a TI não se trata apenas de construir computadores e usar a Internet, trata-se realmente das pessoas. Essa é a essência do trabalho de suporte de TI. De que adianta a tecnologia ou a informação se as pessoas não conseguem usar a tecnologia ou entender as informações? A TI ajuda as pessoas a resolver problemas significativos usando a tecnologia, e é por isso que você verá suas influências na educação, medicina, jornalismo, construção, transporte, entretenimento ou, na verdade, em qualquer setor do planeta. A TI trata de mudar o mundo por meio das formas como colaboramos, compartilhamos e criamos juntos.
Então, como é o trabalho diário de alguém no suporte de TI? Bem, isso varia muito dependendo se você está fazendo suporte presencial ou remoto e em uma pequena ou grande empresa, e realmente não existe trabalho diário. Já que os quebra-cabeças e desafios são sempre novos e interessantes. Mas, em geral, os especialistas em suporte de TI garantem que o equipamento tecnológico de uma organização esteja funcionando sem problemas. Isso inclui gerenciamento, instalação, manutenção, solução de problemas e configuração de equipamentos de escritório e de computação.
Também nunca houve tantas oportunidades de entrar no setor de TI do que agora. Além de o campo de TI ser incrivelmente diversificado, as perspectivas de emprego também estão crescendo. A projeção é de que os empregos de TI somente nos EUA cresçam 12% na próxima década. Isso é maior do que a média de todas as outras ocupações.
Get the latest updates from Google
You're already taking control of your career path by enrolling in this course. Now, you can stay ahead of the curve by subscribing to email updates directly from Grow with Google.
You’ll receive:
- Curated career resources and tools. Be among the first to know about new career-related resources from the Grow with Google team, and get tips about making the most of what we have to offer.
- Alerts on the latest courses from Google: Take advantage of the latest learning opportunities and develop new skills to stay competitive in a rapidly changing job market.
- Pro tips to get the most out of AI. Keep up to date and learn how to use AI to help make decisions, solve problems, and boost productivity and creativity.
- Ada Lovelace: Ada Lovelace was born in 1815 to Anna Milbanke and the poet Lord Byron. Her mother Anna Milbanke educated her to excel in mathematics. When Lovelace was still young, she was shown the Difference Engine (a mechanical calculator developed by Charles Babbage) and published a set of notes which contained the first computer algorithm for the Analytical Engine in 1843. Lovelace predicted at the time that computers would eventually be used outside of mathematics for things like composing music and made predictions about how technology would influence society.
- Alan Turing: Alan Turing was born in 1912. While completing his degrees, he developed the concept of the Turing machine. Turing proved that there were some yes/no mathematical questions that could never be solved computationally which defined computation and its limitations. These findings would go on to become one of the seeds of computer science and his conceptual Turing machine (so named by his Doctoral advisor) is considered a predecessor of modern computer programs. During the Second World War, Turing developed the Turing-Welchman Bombe which was used to decipher Nazi codes and intercept Nazi messages. After the war, Turing's Imitation Game (now known as the Turing test) was created as a means to evaluate the abilities of artificial intelligence.
- Margaret Hamilton: Margaret Hamilton was born in 1936. While working in the meteorology department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she developed software for predicting weather. Later Hamilton would go on to work on the software that was used in the NASA Apollo command and lunar modules. With her experience writing software, she wanted to ensure that this skill would get its due respect and coined the term “software engineering.” Culminating her experience working on the Apollo missions and moon landings, Hamilton formalized what she learned into a theory that would later become the Universal System Language.
- Admiral Grace Hopper: Grace Hopper was born in 1906. During the Second World War, she joined the US Navy Reserve after taking a leave from her role as a mathematics professor at Vassar College. In the Navy, she was assigned the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University where she worked on the programming team for the Mark I computer. After the war and her time at Harvard, she began working on more powerful computers and recommended that a programming language be developed that used English words rather than symbols. This concept would eventually become FLOW-MATIC the first programming language to use English words which also necessitated the invention of the first compiler (a program that translates source code into machine code). Notably, she is also credited with first using the term “computer bug” after a real bug (a moth) flew into a computer she was working on. Later in her career, she was one of the designers of COBOL, a programming language that is still in use today.
- Annie Easley developed the energy analytics code used to analyze power technology including the technology that was used in battery technology for Centaur rockets and early hybrid vehicles
- Katherine Johnson was a physicist, mathematician, and space scientist who provided the calculation for important missions like the first orbit of the Earth and the Apollo 11 moon landing.
- Dorothy Vaughan was a mathematician who would eventually become the first African American supervisor of NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics which would later become NASA) and a FORTRAN expert programmer working on the Scout Launch Vehicle Program (a family of rockets that placed small satellites in orbit).
- Mary Jackson was NASA’s first Black female engineer. She worked on wind tunnel and flight experiments and would go on to earn NASA’s most senior engineering title.
- Melba Roy Mouton was a Head Mathematician at NASA working on Project Echo, the first experiment in passive satellite communication. At NASA, she wrote programs that calculated locations and trajectories of aircraft.
- Evelyn Boyd Granville worked on multiple projects in the Apollo and Mercury programs for NASA. She worked on computer techniques related to concepts like celestial mechanics and trajectory computation.
- Hedy Lamarr: Hedy Lamarr was born in 1914. A movie actress during the golden age of Hollywood, she was also a self-taught inventor. During the Second World War, she read about radio-controlled torpedoes which could potentially be jammed by enemy forces. She and a composer friend proposed and patented an idea for a frequency-hopping radio signal that used existing player piano technology. The principles of this work would eventually be used in familiar technologies like WiFI, Bluetooth, and GPS.
- Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena: Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena was born in 1917. An electrical engineer, in 1940 he patented an adapter that let monochrome cameras use colors. This technology was one of the earliest forms of color television. Camarena’s system would eventually be used by NASA for the Voyager mission and made color images of Jupiter possible.
- Gerald (Jerry) Lawson : Jerry Lawson was born in 1940. Working as a semiconductor engineer for the Fairchild company, he worked on a team that developed the Fairchild Channel F, a color video game console that was designed to use interchangeable game cartridges. Previously, most game systems had built-in programming. He would later be dubbed the “father of the video game cartridge” for this work.
- Mark E. Dean: Mark Dean was born in 1957. An inventor and computer scientist, he is the chief engineer of the IBM team that released the IBM personal computer. He holds three of the nine patents for the PC. He and his team also created the first gigahertz computer chip and he also helped develop the color PC monitor. Along with Dennis Moeller, he developed the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus which was a precursor to modern bus structures like PCI and PCI express.
- Clarence “Skip” Ellis: Clarence Ellis was born in 1943. He was a computer scientist and professor who pioneered in Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Groupware. In fact, while working at Xerox PARC, he and his team developed a groupware system called OfficeTalk. For the first time, this system allowed for collaboration from a distance using ethernet. He also focused on icon-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that have become prevalent in modern computing.
- Gladys West: Gladys West was born in 1930. A mathematician, she was hired to work for the US Navy to more accurately model the shape of the Earth. She used algorithms to account for all sorts of variations in the shape of the Earth and her model would eventually be used as the basis for the Global Positioning System (GPS).
Logic Gates
Knowing how logic gates work is important to understanding how a computer works. Computers work by performing binary calculations. Logic gates are electrical components that tell a computer how to perform binary calculations. They specify rules for how to produce an electrical output based on one or more electrical inputs. Computers use these electrical signals to represent two binary states: either an “on” state or an “off” state. A logic gate takes in one or more of these binary states and determines whether to pass along an “on” or “off” signal.
Several logic gates have been developed to represent different rules for producing a binary output. This reading covers six of the most common logic gates.
Six common logic gates
NOT gate
The NOT gate is the simplest because it has only one input signal. The NOT gate takes that input signal and outputs a signal with the opposite binary state. If the input signal is “on,” a NOT gate outputs an “off” signal. If the input signal is “off,” a NOT gate outputs an “on” signal. All the logic gates can be defined using a schematic diagram and truth table. Here’s how this logic rule is often represented:

On the left, you have a schematic diagram of a NOT gate. Schematic drawings usually represent a physical NOT gate as a triangle with a small circle on the output side of the gate. To the right of the schematic diagram, you also have a “truth table” that tells you the output value for each of the two possible input values.
AND gate
The AND gate involves two input signals rather than just one. Having two input signals means there will be four possible combinations of input values. The AND rule outputs an “on” signal only when both the inputs are “on.” Otherwise, the output signal will be “off.”

OR gate
The OR gate involves two input signals. The OR rule outputs an “off” signal only when both the inputs are “off.” Otherwise, the output signal will be “on.”

XOR Gate
The XOR gate also involves two input signals. The XOR rule outputs an “on” signal when only one (but not both) of the inputs are “on.” Otherwise, the output signal will be “off.”

The truth tables for XOR and OR gates are very similar. The only difference is that the XOR gate outputs an “off” when both inputs are “on” while the OR outputs an “on.” Sometimes you may hear the XOR gate referred to as an “exclusive OR” gate.
NAND gate
The NAND gate involves two input signals. The NAND rule outputs an “off” signal only when both the inputs are “on.” Otherwise, the output signal will be “on.”

If you compare the truth tables for the NAND and AND gates, you may notice that the NAND outputs are the opposite of the AND outputs. This is because the NAND rule is just a combination of the AND and NOT rules: it takes the AND output and runs it through the NOT rule! For this reason, you might hear the NAND referred to as a “not-AND” gate.
XNOR gate
Finally, consider the XNOR gate. It also involves two input signals. The XNOR rule outputs an “on” signal only when both the inputs are the same (both “On” or both “Off”). Otherwise, the output signal will be “off.”

The XNOR rule is another combination of two earlier rules: it takes the XOR output and runs it through the NOT rule. For this reason, you might hear the XNOR referred to as a “not-XOR” gate.
Combining gates (building circuits)
Logic gates are physical electronic components—a person can buy them and plug them into a circuit board. Logic gates can be linked together to create complex electrical systems (circuits) that perform complicated binary calculations. You link gates together by letting the output from one gate serve as an input for another gate or by using the same inputs for multiple gates. Computers are this kind of complex electrical system.
Here’s a schematic drawing for a small circuit built with gates described above:

Here is the truth table for this circuit:

This circuit uses three logic gates: an XOR gate, a NOT gate, and an AND gate. It takes two inputs (A and B) and produces two outputs (1 and 2). A and B are the inputs for the XOR gate. The output of that gate became the input of the NOT gate. Then, the output of the NOT gate became an input for the AND gate (with input A as the other). Output 1 is the output from the AND gate. Output 2 is the output from the XOR gate.
Key takeaways
Logic gates are the physical components that allow computers to make binary calculations.
Logic gates represent different rules for taking one or more binary inputs and outputting a specific binary value (“on” or “off”).
Logic gates can be linked so that the output of one gate serves as the input for other gates.
Circuits are complex electrical systems built by linking logic gates together. Computers are this kind of complex electrical system.
O sistema binário é como nossos computadores contam usando 1s e 0s, mas os humanos não contam assim. Quando você era criança, você pode ter contado usando dez dedos na mão, esse sistema de contagem inato é chamado de forma decimal ou sistema de base dez. No sistema decimal, há dez números possíveis que você pode usar, variando de 0 a 9.
Binary Conversion
Decimal values, binary values, and characters are all used to communicate information. Computers receive and communicate information with binary values, so the binary system shapes the rules and conventions of how computers interact with one another. Being able to convert binary values to decimal values or characters will help you better understand IT infrastructure and computer networking. In this reading, you’ll learn more about converting between decimal values, binary values, and characters. You’ll also practice using a binary conversion table.
Use a table to convert between decimal and binary
By convention, decimal numbers are represented with 8 bits (1 byte) in binary. Each bit is either a 0 or a 1, so 28 = 256 decimal numbers can be represented with 1 byte. Additionally, each bit represents a specific decimal value based on its order in the byte. The 1st (leftmost) bit is 128, and each bit after that is half the value of the previous one.
You can use a conversion table, like the one that follows, to convert from decimal to binary, and vice versa:
1st bit | 2nd bit | 3rd bit | 4th bit | 5th bit | 6th bit | 7th bit | 8th bit | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Decimal value | 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
Off or on | <fill in> | <fill in> | <fill in> | <fill in> | <fill in> | <fill in> | <fill in> | <fill in> |
In this table, the “Decimal value” row displays the decimal value of each bit in the byte. For example, the 3rd bit has a value of 32 and the 8th bit has a value of 1. To use this table for a conversion, the “Off or on” row is filled to indicate if a bit is off (0) or on (1). Then, the numbers in the “Decimal value” rows that have a 1 in the “Off or on” row of the same column are added together to get the decimal value of the byte.
This might seem complicated, but it just takes some practice! In the next sections, you’ll use this table to convert from binary to decimal values and from decimal to binary values.
Convert from binary to decimal values
To use the table to convert from binary to decimal values, enter the byte you want to convert into the “Off or on” row. For example, to convert the byte 10011101 to a decimal value, fill the “Off or on” row with the values of each bit in the byte, like this:
1st bit | 2nd bit | 3rd bit | 4th bit | 5th bit | 6th bit | 7th bit | 8th bit | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Decimal value | 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
Off or on | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
In this example, 128 + 16 + 8 + 4 + 1 = 157. Therefore, the decimal value represented by the binary number 10011101 is 157.
Convert from decimal to binary values
To use this table to convert from a decimal value to a binary value, put 0s and 1s in the “Off or on” row of the table so that the sum of the decimal values of any columns that contain a 1 in the “Off or on” row add up to the decimal value. For example, to convert the decimal value 87 to binary, you’d fill out the table like this:
1st bit | 2nd bit | 3rd bit | 4th bit | 5th bit | 6th bit | 7th bit | 8th bit | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Decimal value | 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
Off or on | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
The sum of 64 + 16 + 4 + 2 + 1 is 87, so the binary value that represents 87 is 01010111.
Try it yourself!
Now, practice on your own by completing the following practice problems:
Use the binary conversion table to convert the binary value 00010011 into a decimal value.
Use the binary conversion table to convert the decimal value 179 into a binary value.
Navigate to the end of this reading to check your answers.
Character encoding: From binary values to characters
As you learned earlier in this lesson, character encoding assigns binary values to characters so that humans can read them. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) was the first character encoding standard used. It uses one byte to represent each character in the English alphabet, digits, and punctuation. Each byte maps to a specific character, so ASCII can only represent 256 characters. The following table displays the ASCII table for the first 5 lowercase letters in the English alphabet:
Binary value | Decimal value | Character |
---|---|---|
01100001 | 97 | a |
01100010 | 98 | b |
01100011 | 99 | c |
01100100 | 100 | d |
01100101 | 101 | e |
UTF-8 is a newer standard that uses the same ASCII character encodings but allows characters to be represented with more than one byte. This allows many more characters–and even emojis–to be represented with binary.
Key takeaways
Computers communicate using binary, so it is important for IT support specialists to understand how binary works and to be able to convert binary values into both decimal values and characters. You can use a binary conversion table to help you convert between decimal and binary values. You can use an ASCII or UTF-8 table to convert from binary or decimal values into characters.
Practice exercise answers
Use the binary conversion table to convert the binary value 00010011 into a decimal value. The decimal value of 00010011 is 19.
Use the binary conversion table to convert the decimal value 179 into a binary value. The binary value of 179 is 10110011.
- hardware,
- sistema operacional,
- software
- e usuários.