Some advantages and disadvantages of information technology

Before we can know about all the advantages and disadvantages of information technology, it is essential that we know what information technology is exactly, and why it has it come to play such a important role in our daily lives. Today information technology involves more than just computer literacy; it also takes into account how computers work and how these computers can further be used not just for information processing but also for communications and problem solving tasks as well.

Our world today has changed a great deal with the aid of information technology. Things that were once done manually or by hand have now become computerized operating systems, which simply require a single click of a mouse to get a task completed. With the aid of IT we are not only able to stream line our business processes but we are also able to get constant information in 'real time' that is up to the minute and up to date.

The significance of IT can be seen from the fact that it has penetrated almost every aspect of our daily lives from business to leisure and even society. Today personal PCs, cell phones, fax machines, pagers, email and internet have all not only become an integral part of our very culture but also play an essential role in our day to day activities. With such a wide scope for the purpose of this article we shall focus on the impact of the internet in information technology.

Some of the advantages of information technology include:

Globalization - IT has not only brought the world closer together, but it has allowed the world's economy to become a single interdependent system. This means that we can not only share information quickly and efficiently, but we can also bring down barriers of linguistic and geographic boundaries. The world has developed into a global village due to the help of information technology allowing countries like Chile and Japan who are not only separated by distance but also by language to shares ideas and information with each other.

Communication - With the help of information technology, communication has also become cheaper, quicker, and more efficient. We can now communicate with anyone around the globe by simply text messaging them or sending them an email for an almost instantaneous response. The internet has also opened up face to face direct communication from different parts of the world thanks to the helps of video conferencing.

Cost effectiveness - Information technology has helped to computerize the business process thus streamlining businesses to make them extremely cost effective money making machines. This in turn increases productivity which ultimately gives rise to profits that means better pay and less strenuous working conditions.

Bridging the cultural gap - Information technology has helped to bridge the cultural gap by helping people from different cultures to communicate with one another, and allow for the exchange of views and ideas, thus increasing awareness and reducing prejudice.

More time - IT has made it possible for businesses to be open 24 x7 all over the globe. This means that a business can be open anytime anywhere, making purchases from different countries easier and more convenient. It also means that you can have your goods delivered right to your doorstep with having to move a single muscle.

Creation of new jobs - Probably the best advantage of information technology is the creation of new and interesting jobs. Computer programmers, Systems analyzers, Hardware and Software developers and Web designers are just some of the many new employment opportunities created with the help of IT.

Some disadvantages of information technology include:

Unemployment - While information technology may have streamlined the business process it has also crated job redundancies, downsizing and outsourcing. This means that a lot of lower and middle level jobs have been done away with causing more people to become unemployed.

Privacy - Though information technology may have made communication quicker, easier and more convenient, it has also bought along privacy issues. From cell phone signal interceptions to email hacking, people are now worried about their once private information becoming public knowledge.

Lack of job security - Industry experts believe that the internet has made job security a big issue as since technology keeps on changing with each day. This means that one has to be in a constant learning mode, if he or she wishes for their job to be secure.

Dominant culture - While information technology may have made the world a global village, it has also contributed to one culture dominating another weaker one. For example it is now argued that US influences how most young teenagers all over the world now act, dress and behave. Languages too have become overshadowed, with English becoming the primary mode of communication for business and everything else.

Definition of Information Technology

In the broadest sense, information technology refers to both the hardware and software that are used to store, retrieve, and manipulate information. At the lowest level you have the servers with an operating system. Installed on these servers are things like database and web serving software. The servers are connected to each other and to users via a network infrastructure. And the users accessing these servers have their own hardware, operating system, and software tools.

A History of Information Technology and Systems

• Four basic periods
  Characterized by a principal technology used to solve the input, processing, output and communication problems of the time:

  1. Premechanical,
  2. Mechanical,
  3. Electromechanical, and
  4. Electronic

A. The Premechanical Age: 3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D.

1. Writing and Alphabets--communication.
   1. First humans communicated only through speaking and picture drawings.
   2. 3000 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) devised cuniform
   3. Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols
   4. The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels; the Romans gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.
2. Paper and Pens--input technologies.
   1. Sumerians' input technology was a stylus that could scratch marks in wet clay.
   2. About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians write on the papyrus plant
   3. around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is based.
3. Books and Libraries: Permanent Storage Devices.
   1. Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books"
   2. The Egyptians kept scrolls
   3. Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together.
4. The First Numbering Systems.
   1. Egyptian system:
      • The numbers 1-9 as vertical lines, the number 10 as a U or circle, the number 100 as a coiled rope, and the number 1,000 as a lotus blossom.
   2. The first numbering systems similar to those in use today were invented between 100 and 200 A.D. by Hindus in India who created a nine-digit numbering system.
   3. Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.
5. The First Calculators: The Abacus.
   
   One of the very first information processors.

B. The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840

1. The First Information Explosion.
   1. Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)
      • Invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450.
   2. The development of book indexes and the widespread use of page numbers.
2. The first general purpose "computers"
   • Actually people who held the job title "computer: one who works with numbers."
3. Slide Rules, the Pascaline and Leibniz's Machine.
   • Slide Rule.
     
     Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule
     • Early example of an analog computer.
   • The Pascaline. Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62).
     
     The Pascaline (front)
     
     (rear view)
     
     Diagram of interior
     
     • One of the first mechanical computing machines, around 1642.
   • Leibniz's Machine.
     Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), German mathematician and philosopher.
     
     The Reckoner (reconstruction)
     
     
4. Babbage's Engines
   Charles Babbage (1792-1871), eccentric English mathematician
   
   
   • The Difference Engine.
     
     
     • Working model created in 1822.
     • The "method of differences".
       
   • The Analytical Engine.
     
     Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom.
     
     
     • Designed during the 1830s
     • Parts remarkably similar to modern-day computers.
       • The "store"
       • The "mill"
       • Punch cards.
     • Punch card idea picked up by Babbage from Joseph Marie Jacquard's (1752-1834) loom.
       • Introduced in 1801.
       • Binary logic
       • Fixed program that would operate in real time.
   • Augusta Ada Byron (1815-52).
     
   • The first programmer

C. The Electromechanical Age: 1840 - 1940.

The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key advance made during this period. Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses.

1. The Beginnings of Telecommunication.
   
   1. Voltaic Battery.
      • Late 18th century.
   2. Telegraph.
      • Early 1800s.
   3. Morse Code.
      • Developed in1835 by Samuel Morse
      • Dots and dashes.
   4. Telephone and Radio.
      • 
        Alexander Graham Bell.
      • 1876
   5. Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.
   6. These two events led to the invention of the radio
      • Guglielmo Marconi
      • 1894
2. Electromechanical Computing
   1. Herman Hollerith and IBM.
      Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) in 1880.
      
      Census Machine.
      
      Early punch cards.
      
      Punch card workers.
      
      • By 1890
      • The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
        • Its first logo
          
   2. Mark 1.
      
      Paper tape stored data and program instructions.
      
      • Howard Aiken, a Ph.D. student at Harvard University
      • Built the Mark I
        • Completed January 1942
        • 8 feet tall, 51 feet long, 2 feet thick, weighed 5 tons, used about 750,000 parts

D. The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present.

1. First Tries.
   • Early 1940s
   • Electronic vacuum tubes.
2. Eckert and Mauchly.
   1. The First High-Speed, General-Purpose Computer Using Vacuum Tubes:
      Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
      The ENIAC team (Feb 14, 1946). Left to right: J. Presper Eckert, Jr.; John Grist Brainerd; Sam Feltman; Herman H. Goldstine; John W. Mauchly; Harold Pender; Major General G. L. Barnes; Colonel Paul N. Gillon.
      
      
      Rear view (note vacuum tubes).
      
      • Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
        • 1946.
        • Used vacuum tubes (not mechanical devices) to do its calculations.
          • Hence, first electronic computer.
        • Developers John Mauchly, a physicist, and J. Prosper Eckert, an electrical engineer
          • The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania
        • Funded by the U.S. Army.
        • But it could not store its programs (its set of instructions)
   2. The First Stored-Program Computer(s)
      
      The Manchester University Mark I (prototype).
      
      • Early 1940s, Mauchly and Eckert began to design the EDVAC - the Electronic Discreet Variable Computer.
      • John von Neumann's influential report in June 1945:
        • "The Report on the EDVAC"
      • British scientists used this report and outpaced the Americans.
        • Max Newman headed up the effort at Manchester University
          • Where the Manchester Mark I went into operation in June 1948--becoming the first stored-program computer.
        • Maurice Wilkes, a British scientist at Cambridge University, completed the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) in 1949--two years before EDVAC was finished.
          • Thus, EDSAC became the first stored-program computer in general use (i.e., not a prototype).
   3. The First General-Purpose Computer for Commercial Use: Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC).
      
      UNIVAC publicity photo.
      
      • Late 1940s, Eckert and Mauchly began the development of a computer called UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)
        • Remington Rand.
        • First UNIVAC delivered to Census Bureau in 1951.
      • But, a machine called LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) went into action a few months before UNIVAC and became the world's first commercial computer.
3. The Four Generations of Digital Computing.
   1. The First Generation (1951-1958).
      1. Vacuum tubes as their main logic elements.
      2. Punch cards to input and externally store data.
      3. Rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data and programs
         • Programs written in
           • Machine language
           • Assembly language
             • Requires a compiler.
   2. The Second Generation (1959-1963).
      1. Vacuum tubes replaced by transistors as main logic element.
         • AT&T's Bell Laboratories, in the 1940s
         • Crystalline mineral materials called semiconductors could be used in the design of a device called a transistor
      2. Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.
      3. Magnetic cores (very small donut-shaped magnets that could be polarized in one of two directions to represent data) strung on wire within the computer became the primary internal storage technology.
         • High-level programming languages
           • E.g., FORTRAN and COBOL
   3. The Third Generation (1964-1979).
      
      
      1. Individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits.
      2. Magnetic tape and disks completely replace punch cards as external storage devices.
      3. Magnetic core internal memories began to give way to a new form, metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) memory, which, like integrated circuits, used silicon-backed chips.
         • Operating systems
         • Advanced programming languages like BASIC developed.
           • Which is where Bill Gates and Microsoft got their start in 1975.
   4. The Fourth Generation (1979- Present).
      1. Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs)
      2. Microprocessors that contained memory, logic, and control circuits (an entire CPU = Central Processing Unit) on a single chip.
         • Which allowed for home-use personal computers or PCs, like the Apple (II and Mac) and IBM PC.
           • Apple II released to public in 1977, by Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs.
             • Initially sold for $1,195 (without a monitor); had 16k RAM.
           • First Apple Mac released in 1984.
           • IBM PC introduced in 1981.
             • Debuts with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System)
         • Fourth generation language software products
           • E.g., Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, Microsoft Word, and many others.
           • Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for PCs arrive in early 1980s
             • 
               MS Windows debuts in 1983, but is quite a clunker.
               • Windows wouldn't take off until version 3 was released in 1990
             • 
               Apple's GUI (on the first Mac) debuts in 1984.