Simplifying the Opaqueness and Dilemma of the Computing Disciplines for the Common Person in Society

Computing fields have changed how society works and relates to one another. Since its inception in the mid-20th century, there have been several fields of computing emerging based on the need for each of them. The earliest field in computing was computer science, which ideally covered everything regarding the study and use of computing machines. As time advanced, other new fields have emerged including computer engineering, software engineering, information systems, information technology, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and now data science. In the current times, there has been a lot of emphasis and developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning as well as cybersecurity. As we go towards the fifth industrial revolution, we stand to witness more use cases of technology and possible new computing fields that will give rise to a lot of ethical considerations within the computing fields. The aim of this paper is to review and help the common person in society understand the different fields of computing, their evolution and how they differ from one another. To better bring out this, the paper historically reviews computing fields, denoting their limitations and how other new fields evolved from the already existing ones. The paper also describes the current state of computing related fields.