Information technology

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Not to be confused with institute of technology.
Information technology (IT) is the application of computers and telecommunicatio
ns equipment to store, retrieve, transmit and manipulate data,[1] often in the c
ontext of a business or other enterprise.[2]
The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but
it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as televisi
on and telephones. Several industries are associated with information technology
, including computer hardware, software, electronics, semiconductors, internet,
telecom equipment, e-commerce and computer services.[3][a]
Humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating and communicating information
since the Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed writing in about 3000 BC,[5] but t
he term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 arti
cle published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thom
as L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single esta
blished name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Their definition co
nsists of three categories: techniques for processing, the application of statis
tical and mathematical methods to decision-making, and the simulation of higherorder thinking through computer programs.[6]
Based on the storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to dis
tinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical (3000 BC
1450 AD
), mechanical (1450 1840), electromechanical (1840 1940) and electronic (1940 present)
.[5] This article focuses on the most recent period (electronic), which began in
about 1940.

Contents
1 History of computer technology
2 Data storage
2.1 Databases
3 Data retrieval
4 Data transmission
5 Data manipulation
6 Academic perspective
7 Commercial and employment perspective
8 Ethical perspective
9 See also
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links
History of computer technology
Main article: History of computing hardware
Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, probably initi
ally in the form of a tally stick.[7] The Antikythera mechanism, dating from abo
ut the beginning of the first century BC, is generally considered to be the earl
iest known mechanical analog computer, and the earliest known geared mechanism.[
8] Comparable geared devices did not emerge in Europe until the 16th century,[9]
and it was not until 1645 that the first mechanical calculator capable of perfo
rming the four basic arithmetical operations was developed.[10]
Electronic computers, using either relays or valves, began to appear in the earl
y 1940s. The electromechanical Zuse Z3, completed in 1941, was the world's first
programmable computer, and by modern standards one of the first machines that c
ould be considered a complete computing machine. Colossus, developed during the
Second World War to decrypt German messages was the first electronic digital com
puter. Although it was programmable, it was not general-purpose, being designed
to perform only a single task. It also lacked the ability to store its program i
n memory; programming was carried out using plugs and switches to alter the inte
rnal wiring.[11] The first recognisably modern electronic digital stored-program
computer was the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), which ran
its first program on 21 June 1948.[12]
The development of transistors in the late 1940s at Bell Laboratories allowed a
new generation of computers to be designed with greatly reduced power consumptio
n. The first commercially available stored-program computer, the Ferranti Mark I
, contained 4050 valves and had a power consumption of 25 kilowatts. By comparis
on the first transistorised computer, developed at the University of Manchester
and operational by November 1953, consumed only 150 watts in its final version.[
13]
Data storage
Main article: Data storage device
Early electronic computers such as Colossus made use of punched tape, a long str
ip of paper on which data was represented by a series of holes, a technology now
obsolete.[14] Electronic data storage, which is used in modern computers, dates
from the Second World War, when a form of delay line memory was developed to re
move the clutter from radar signals, the first practical application of which wa
s the mercury delay line.[15] The first random-access digital storage device was
the Williams tube, based on a standard cathode ray tube,[16] but the informatio
n stored in it and delay line memory was volatile in that it had to be continuou
sly refreshed, and thus was lost once power was removed. The earliest form of no
n-volatile computer storage was the magnetic drum, invented in 1932[17] and used
in the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpos

e electronic computer.[18]
IBM introduced the first hard disk drive in 1956, as a component of their 305 RA
MAC computer system.[19] Most digital data today is still stored magnetically on
hard disks, or optically on media such as CD-ROMs.[20] Until 2002 most informat
ion was stored on analog devices, but that year digital storage capacity exceede
d analog for the first time. As of 2007 almost 94% of the data stored worldwide
was held digitally:[21] 52% on hard disks, 28% on optical devices and 11% on dig
ital magnetic tape. It has been estimated that the worldwide capacity to store i
nformation on electronic devices grew from less than 3 exabytes in 1986 to 295 e
xabytes in 2007,[22] doubling roughly every 3 years.[23]
Databases
Main article: Database management system
Database management systems emerged in the 1960s to address the problem of stori
ng and retrieving large amounts of data accurately and quickly. One of the earli
est such systems was IBM's Information Management System (IMS),[24] which is sti
ll widely deployed more than 40 years later.[25] IMS stores data hierarchically,
[24] but in the 1970s Ted Codd proposed an alternative relational storage model
based on set theory and predicate logic and the familiar concepts of tables, row
s and columns. The first commercially available relational database management s
ystem (RDBMS) was available from Oracle in 1980.[26]
All database management systems consist of a number of components that together
allow the data they store to be accessed simultaneously by many users while main
taining its integrity. A characteristic of all databases is that the structure o
f the data they contain is defined and stored separately from the data itself, i
n a database schema.[24]
The extensible markup language (XML) has become a popular format for data repres
entation in recent years. Although XML data can be stored in normal file systems
, it is commonly held in relational databases to take advantage of their "robust
implementation verified by years of both theoretical and practical effort".[27]
As an evolution of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), XML's textbased structure offers the advantage of being both machine and human-readable.[2
8]
Data retrieval
The relational database model introduced a programming-language independent Stru
ctured Query Language (SQL), based on relational algebra.[26]
The terms "data" and "information" are not synonymous. Anything stored is data,
but it only becomes information when it is organized and presented meaningfully.
[29] Most of the world's digital data is unstructured, and stored in a variety o
f different physical formats[30][b] even within a single organization. Data ware
houses began to be developed in the 1980s to integrate these disparate stores. T
hey typically contain data extracted from various sources, including external so
urces such as the Internet, organised in such a way as to facilitate decision su
pport systems (DSS).[31]
Data transmission
Data transmission has three aspects: transmission, propagation, and reception.[3
2] It can be broadly categorized as broadcasting, in which information is transm
itted unidirectionally downstream, or telecommunications, with bidirectional ups
tream and downstream channels.[22]
XML has been increasingly employed as a means of data interchange since the earl
y 2000s,[33] particularly for machine-oriented interactions such as those involv
ed in web-oriented protocols such as SOAP,[28] describing "data-in-transit rathe
r than ... data-at-rest".[33] One of the challenges of such usage is converting

data from relational databases into XML Document Object Model (DOM) structures.[
34]
Data manipulation
Hilbert and Lopez identify the exponential pace of technological change (a kind
of Moore's law): machines' application-specific capacity to compute information
per capita roughly doubled every 14 months between 1986 and 2007; the per capita
capacity of the world's general-purpose computers doubled every 18 months durin
g the same two decades; the global telecommunication capacity per capita doubled
every 34 months; the world's storage capacity per capita required roughly 40 mo
nths to double (every 3 years); and per capita broadcast information has doubled
every 12.3 years.[22]
Massive amounts of data are stored worldwide every day, but unless it can be ana
lysed and presented effectively it essentially resides in what have been called
data tombs: "data archives that are seldom visited".[35] To address that issue,
the field of data mining
"the process of discovering interesting patterns and kn
owledge from large amounts of data"[36]
emerged in the late 1980s.[37]
Academic perspective
In an academic context, the Association for Computing Machinery defines IT as "u
ndergraduate degree programs that prepare students to meet the computer technolo
gy needs of business, government, healthcare, schools, and other kinds of organi
zations .... IT specialists assume responsibility for selecting hardware and sof
tware products appropriate for an organization, integrating those products with
organizational needs and infrastructure, and installing, customizing, and mainta
ining those applications for the organization s computer users."[38]
Commercial and employment perspective
In a business context, the Information Technology Association of America has def
ined information technology as "the study, design, development, application, imp
lementation, support or management of computer-based information systems".[39] T
he responsibilities of those working in the field include network administration
, software development and installation, and the planning and management of an o
rganization's technology life cycle, by which hardware and software are maintain
ed, upgraded and replaced.
The business value of information technology lies in the automation of business
processes, provision of information for decision making, connecting businesses w
ith their customers, and the provision of productivity tools to increase efficie
ncy.
Worldwide IT spending forecast[40] (billions of U.S. dollars) Category 2014 spe
nding 2015 spending
Devices
685
725
Data center systems
140
144
Enterprise software
321
344
IT services
967
1,007
Telecom services
1,635 1,668
Total 3,749 3,888
Employment distribution of computer systems design and related services, 201
1[41]
Employment in the computer systems and design related services industry, in
thousands, 1990-2011[41]
Occupational growth and wages in computer systems design and related service
s, 2010-2020[41]
Projected percent change in employment in selected occupations in computer s

ystems design and related services, 2010-2020[41]

Projected average annual percent change in output and employment in selected
industries, 2010-2020[41]
Ethical perspective
Main article: Information ethics
The field of information ethics was established by mathematician Norbert Wiener
in the 1940s.[42] Some of the ethical issues associated with the use of informat
ion technology include:[43]
Breaches of copyright by those downloading files stored without the permissi
on of the copyright holders
Employers monitoring their employees' emails and other Internet usage
Unsolicited emails
Hackers accessing online databases
Web sites installing cookies or spyware to monitor a user's online activitie
s
See also
Data processing
Information and communications technology (ICT)
References
Notes
On the later more broad application of the term IT, Keary comments: "In its
original application 'information technology' was appropriate to describe the co
nvergence of technologies with application in the broad field of data storage, r
etrieval, processing, and dissemination. This useful conceptual term has since b
een converted to what purports to be concrete use, but without the reinforcement
of definition ... the term IT lacks substance when applied to the name of any f
unction, discipline, or position."[4]
"Format" refers to the physical characteristics of the stored data such as i
ts encoding scheme; "structure" describes the organisation of that data.
Citations
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"Free on-line dictionary of computing (FOLDOC)". Retrieved 9 February 2013.
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12 (subscription required)
Ralston, Hemmendinger & Reilly (2000), p. 869
Butler, Jeremy G., A History of Information Technology and Systems, Universi
ty of Arizona, retrieved 2 August 2012
Leavitt, Harold J.; Whisler, Thomas L. (1958), "Management in the 1980s", Ha
rvard Business Review 11
Schmandt-Besserat, Denise (1981), "Decipherment of the earliest tablets", Sc
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Wright (2012), p. 279
Childress (2000), p. 94
Chaudhuri (2004), p. 3
Lavington (1980)
Enticknap, Nicholas (Summer 1998), "Computing's Golden Jubilee", Resurrectio

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008
Cooke-Yarborough, E. H. (June 1998), "Some early transistor applications in
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Lavington (1998), p. 1
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The Manchester Mark 1, University of Manchester, retrieved 24 January 2009
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Wang & Taratorin (1999), pp. 4 5.
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Pardede (2009), p. 2
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Han, Kamber & Pei (2011), p. 5
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