With Ken Abernethy and Tom Allen's fresh approach to the introductory computing course, students develop the skills to understand, create, work and communicate using digital media and networks. Excitement builds via the book and the accompanying Web site as students discover the worlds of image processing, digital sound, web publishing, and much more. The organizing theme for the book is that the computer is not merely a tool but rather itself a medium for representing, storing, manipulating, and communicating different forms of information: text, numbers, graphics, images, sounds, and video. The book focuses on digital media rather than the customary survey of applications software designed to process these media. In addition to teaching basic computer skills, the authors promote information fluency in which students gain an understanding of the foundational concepts on which the technology is derived and develop higher-level intellectual capabilities for applying the technology.