Our world is full of lots of information. From your music playlist to your mobile phone contents, from your saved computer games to the details on your Facebook profile, from the information stored by your school to the data stored by your doctor, there is a lot of information and it all needs to be stored, categorized, searched and sorted. The amount of data that we store is growing at a tremendous rate. In fact, every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. So much that 90% of the digital data in the world today was created in just the last two years. That's the equivalent of a 60 foot high wall of iPads stretching from Edinburgh to Oman in the Middle East. How do we manage this massive increase in the data we store? We depend on information systems to help us create, control, store, find and access this information. So what is an information system? An information system is a set of computer-based tools for collecting, storing and processing data in our world. Businesses and other organizations rely on information systems to carry out and manage their operations, interact with their customers and suppliers and compete in the marketplace. For instance, corporations use information systems to reach their potential customers with targeted messages over the web to process financial accounts and to manage their workforce. Government use information systems to provide services, cost effectively to citizens, to manage the economy and to gather taxes. Digital goods such as electronic books and software and online services such as auctions and social networking are all provided by and operated by some kind of information system. A typical information system will have somewhere to store the data, often this is a database. It will be a program which helps you use the data and the program will have a user interface where you the user issue commands and receive the results. Information systems play a role in every aspect of your life. In our constantly connected digital world, it is important that you understand how information systems and the data they collect impact on everything that you do.