When you think of computers, I want you to think:

The hardware is the tangible (metal and plastic) stuff you buy. It provides a place to store process and retrieve information, provides power to the screen and other input and output devices, and is the "place" that software runs.
The software is what will interest us most in this course. It is the instructions or logic that tells the computer what to do.
The networks allow communication between individual computers. This communication allows us to talk to each other, but it also allows a set of computers to work together to create programs that are much larger and faster than one computer alone could create.
The data is the "bits" of information that are stored inside the computer. Video, numbers, text and images are all examples. In the end, computers are simply a means to collect, store, process and give us back the right bits of data. As we will see later, I will use the term Information to talk about a particular kind of data.