Impacts Of Information Technology On Society

4 Pages 1007 Words

Information Technology has become more and more popular in the last 10 years. Information technology is surrounding us everywhere in our daily lives, from telephone networks, product scanner, and computers of all kind. They are permitting us to reshape our lives, jobs, businesses, and entire societies. Even global political and economic affairs are subject to the influence of information technologies (Kenneth C. Laudon, Carol G. Traver, Jane P. Laudon, 1994). Information technology is an integration of computing technology and information processing (Long, L & Long, N, 1997). The term is used to describe technologies that enable us to record, store, process, retrieve, transmit and receive information. It encompasses modern technologies such as computers, facsimile transmission, micrographic, telecommunications and microelectronics. Older technologies such as cave drawing, printing are also included in the term (Kate Behan & Diana Holmes, 1990). There are different kinds of information technologies available today, and they can be categorised into four basic types: sensing, communication, analysing, and display. The revolution of information technologies is changing the way we live, work, and play. The cornerstone of this revolution, the computer, is transforming the way we communicate, do business, and learning (Kenneth C. Laudon, Carol G. Traver, Jane P. Laudon, 1994). People don¡¦t need to travel around to get the best deal of a car or order tickets; they don¡¦t need to be at work in the office, as long as they have a computer or a PDA. People can now access information more efficiently.

The recent history of information technology has traditionally been broken down into four or five distinct stages, each marked by the technology used to create the main logic element used in computers during the period. The first generation of computers used vacuum tubes as their main logic element. Although vacuum tubes represented a great ad...