- published: 28 Jul 2013
- views: 7319
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 knowledge bases, etc. Advancements are mainly driven in the field of computer science.
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".