Information technology (IT) can be defined in various ways, but is broadly considered to encompass the use of computers and telecommunications equipment to store, retrieve, transmit and manipulate data. The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones.
Humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating and communicating information since the Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed writing in about 3000 BC, but the term "information technology" in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Leavitt and Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Based on the storage and processing technology employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical (3000 BC – 1450 AD), mechanical (1450–1840), electromechanical (1840–1940) and electronic. This article focuses on the latter of those periods, which began in about 1940.
Read more about Information Technology: Definitions, History of Computers, Data Storage, Databases, Data Retrieval, Data Transmission, Data Manipulation, Commercial Perspective, Social and Ethical Perspectives
Famous quotes containing the words information and/or technology:
“I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing—it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.”
—Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)