What is Information Technology?
Information technology is the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems—particularly software applications and computer hardware. IT workers help ensure that computers work well for people.
Four ages in Information Technology:
Pre-Mechanical
Mechanical
Electro-Mechanical
Electronic
What are the distinct differences among the four ages in information technology?
Pre-Mechanical
Mode of communication, their language are though pictures - petroglyphs to tell a story, map their terrain, or keep accounts such as how many animals one owned.
the formal language was found and develop better media to communicate such as; rags, papyrus, and eventually paper.
the calculator they used is abacus known as the first calculator.
Mechanical
A lot of new technologies were developed in this era due to an explosion of interest in computation and information.
The calculation tool are highly upgrade:
so-called analog ruler - analog computer used for multiplying and dividing.
Arithmetic machine - a very popular mechanical computer capable of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing two numbers.
Electro-Mechanical
The mode of communications becomes widely improved as the beginnings of telecommunications occured in this age.
Communication technology such as Morse code, telephone, radio, etc.
A well-programmed computer is invented
The first large-scale automatic digital computer were used to simulate the feasibility of an implosion to detonate an atomic bomb.
Electronic
Machines used electronic switches, in the form of vacuum tubes, instead of the electromechanical relays seen in the previous era.
Computer in this era and mode of computation:
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose computer.
It could solve a large class of numerical problems through reprogramming used to calculate artillery firing tables feasibility of the thermonuclear weapon.
The next era is the Information Age and the Internet.
Electronic computers, the onset of the Information Age, the Internet, synonymous with modern IT.
Its initial software applications were e-mail and computer file transfer.
The www or the World Wide Web was born which leads to the internet to be more accessible as mode of communication.
At last, Internet is now a global platform for accelerating the flow of information and is pushing many, if not most, older forms of media into obsolescence.
How does ICT play an important role in Innovation?
In both advanced and emerging economies, research, technology and innovation have become main factors leading to economic development. In the knowledge economy, through trade in products and services, direct investment and technology flows, and the movement of people, information circulates at the international level. For more than a decade, information and communication technologies (ICT) have been at the center of economic shifts. The ICT sector has an important role to play, in particular by contributing to rapid technological development and growth in productivity.
Impressive