We explain what telematics is, its origin, advantages, disadvantages and multiple applications. Furthermore, its humanistic relevance.
What is telematics?
Telematics or teleinformatics is a scientific and technological discipline that arises from the union of the fields of study and application of computer systems and telecommunications. Therefore, telematics is interested in all computer data transmission systems, from global positioning systems (GPS) to different types of data transmission over the Internet.
As will be seen, this is a very broad field of knowledge, but broadly speaking is the design, evaluation, management and application of communication models to the transportation and storage of information based on three different basic planes or perspectives:
- The user's plane. Dedicated to the distribution and processing of final information;
- The signaling and control plane. Dedicated to processing information pertinent to the system itself and its interaction with the user, for decision making;
- The management plan. Dedicated to the administration of operational and administrative information of the system, as well as its interaction with network operators.
These three planes make up a global model, and each one is in turn divided into subsystems known as protocol entities, which group together the different functions required by an interconnection of various systems.
See also: Computing
Origin of telematics
The term “telematics” arises from the union of “telecommunications” and “informatics”, since it is fundamentally a crossing of these two fields of study. The word was coined in France in 1976, in a government report known as the Nora-Minc Report but titled “Informatization of society.”
The emergence of this field of study, however, occurs under different names depending on the academy, and can be called Computer and Communications in the Anglo-Saxon, for example, or even communication (computer + Communications). However, in many Spanish-speaking countries it is preferred to use the name “Telematics Engineering”.
What is telematics for?
On the one hand, telematics deals with the technical or material aspect of the interconnection of computer systems which is of vital importance in today's globalized world, so dependent on transactions and communications over long distances.
On the other hand, covers applications of humanistic, social and political relevance that cannot be secondary to technological criteria, such as everything linked to tele-education, e-commerce, electronic administration (e-government), massive content and information services, etc.
Telematics applications
The applications of telematics have to do, for now, with:
- The design of computer networks and better remote data transmission systems.
- The application of the Internet to numerous aspects of daily life, allowing the facilitation and abbreviation of procedures.
- Improvement of the transmission quality of existing networks, through the incorporation of new strategies or new materials.
- Design of new data collection or information transmission mechanisms allowing more informed decisions to be made in different areas: industrial, business, political, etc.
Advantages of telematics
The development of telematics brings with it important advances in technological and computational matters, which allows, among other things:
- Reaches significant levels of automation or remote control which translates into the possibility of carrying out tasks with a minimum of human risk.
- Increase productivity and business visibility, through new information collection strategies and therefore decision making.
- Develop new forms of social bond and economic transaction, allowing great distances to be overcome efficiently and quickly.
Disadvantages of telematics
The possible disadvantages of the application of telematics are not really a consequence of this discipline, but depend on the specific way in which human beings use it.
For example, it can be used to strengthen worrying aspects of our behavior such as the social isolation of future generations, the destruction of jobs replaced by remote control networks.
It could also be used to design police and repressive protocols that serve to politically subjugate people. These possible consequences of telematics, as in many other technologies, depend more on the ethical and moral aspect of the profession than on the content itself in which it is interested.
Continue with: Information system
References
- “Telematics” on Wikipedia.
- “What is telematics?” (video) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
- “Telematics” in Construmática, architecture, engineering and construction metaportal.
- “What is Telematics?” in GPS Insight.
- “What is Telematics?” at Omnitracs.
