Information Technology (IT) is the branch of engineering that deals with the use of computers and telecommunications to store, retrieve and transmit information. The acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications are its main fields. The term in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review, in which authors Leavitt and Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Some of the modern and emerging fields of Information technology are next generation web technologies, bioinformatics, cloud computing, global information systems, large scale knowledgebases, etc. Advancements are mainly driven in the field of computer science.
Information
The English word was apparently derived from the Latin stem (information-) of the nominative (informatio): this noun is in its turn derived from the verb "informare" (to inform) in the sense of "to give form to the mind", "to discipline", "instruct", "teach".
Technology
IT is the area of managing technology and spans a wide variety of areas that include computer software, information systems, computer hardware, programming languages but are not limited to things such as processes, and data constructs. In short, anything that renders data, information or perceived knowledge in any visual format whatsoever, via any multimedia distribution mechanism, is considered part of the IT domain. IT provides businesses with four sets of core services to help execute the business strategy: business process automation, providing information, connecting with customers, and productivity tools.
IT professionals perform a variety of functions that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. A few of the duties that IT professionals perform may include data management, networking, engineering computer hardware, database and software design, as well as management and administration of entire systems. Information technology is starting to spread further than the conventional personal computer and network technologies, and more into integrations of other technologies such as the use of cell phones, televisions, automobiles, and more, which is increasing the demand for such jobs.
In the recent past, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology and the Association for Computing Machinery have collaborated to form accreditation and curriculum standards for degrees in Information Technology as a distinct field of study as compared to Computer Science and Information Systems today. SIGITE (Special Interest Group for IT Education) is the ACM working group for defining these standards. The Worldwide IT services revenue totaled $763 billion in 2009.
Information and communication technology spending in 2005
Technological capacity and growth
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 has roughly doubled every 14 months between 1986-2007; the per capita capacity of the world’s general-purpose computers has doubled every 18 months during the same two decades; the global telecommunication capacity per capita doubled every 34 months; the world’s storage capacity per capita required roughly 40 months to double (every 3 years); and per capita broadcast information has doubled roughly every 12.3 years.
