ISP Data Caps: What You Need to Know

Extensional term for information technology

Internet history timeline

Early research and development: 1960–1962: J. C. R. Licklider networking ideas 1960–1964: RAND networking concepts developed 1962–1964: ARPA networking ideas 1965 (1965): NPL network concepts conceived 1966 (1966): Merit Network founded 1967 (1967): ARPANET planning begins 1967 (1967): Symposium on Operating Systems Principles 1969 (1969): NPL followed by the ARPANET carry their first packets 1970 (1970): Network Information Center (NIC) 1971 (1971): Tymnet switched-circuit network 1972 (1972): Merit Network's packet-switched network operational 1972 (1972): Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established 1973 (1973): CYCLADES network demonstrated 1973 (1973): PARC Universal Packet development begins 1974 (1974): Transmission Control Program specification published 1975 (1975): Telenet commercial packet-switched network 1976 (1976): X.25 protocol approved and deployed on public data networks 1978 (1978): Minitel introduced 1979 (1979): Internet Activities Board (IAB) 1980 (1980): USENET news using UUCP 1980 (1980): Ethernet standard introduced 1981 (1981): BITNET established Merging the networks and creating the Internet: 1981 (1981): Computer Science Network (CSNET) 1982 (1982): TCP/IP protocol suite formalized 1982 (1982): Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) 1983 (1983): Domain Name System (DNS) 1983 (1983): MILNET split off from ARPANET 1984 (1984): OSI Reference Model released 1985 (1985): First .COM domain name registered 1986 (1986): NSFNET with 56 kbit/s links 1986 (1986): Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 1987 (1987): UUNET founded 1988 (1988): NSFNET upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s (T1) 1988 (1988): Morris worm 1988 (1988): Complete Internet protocol suite 1989 (1989): Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) 1989 (1989): PSINet founded, allows commercial traffic 1989 (1989): Federal Internet Exchanges (FIX East|FIXes) 1990 (1990): GOSIP (without TCP/IP) 1990 (1990): ARPANET decommissioned 1990 (1990): Advanced Network and Services (ANS) 1990 (1990): UUNET/Alternet allows commercial traffic 1990 (1990): Archie search engine 1991 (1991): Wide area information server (WAIS) 1991 (1991): Gopher 1991 (1991): Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) 1991 (1991): ANS CO+RE allows commercial traffic 1991 (1991): World Wide Web (WWW) 1992 (1992): NSFNET upgraded to 45 Mbit/s (T3) 1992 (1992): Internet Society (ISOC) established 1993 (1993): Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) 1993 (1993): InterNIC established 1993 (1993): AOL added USENET access 1993 (1993): Mosaic web browser released 1994 (1994): Full text web search engines 1994 (1994): North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) established Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet: 1995 (1995): New Internet architecture with commercial ISPs connected at NAPs 1995 (1995): NSFNET decommissioned 1995 (1995): GOSIP updated to allow TCP/IP 1995 (1995): very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) 1995 (1995): IPv6 proposed 1996 (1996): AOL changes pricing model from hourly to monthly 1998 (1998): Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 1999 (1999): IEEE 802.11b wireless networking 1999 (1999): Internet2/Abilene Network 1999 (1999): vBNS+ allows broader access 2000 (2000): Dot-com bubble bursts 2001 (2001): New top-level domain names activated 2001 (2001): Code Red I, Code Red II, and Nimda worms 2003 (2003): UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) phase I 2003 (2003): National LambdaRail founded 2004 (2004): UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) 2005 (2005): UN WSIS phase II 2006 (2006): First meeting of the Internet Governance Forum 2010 (2010): First internationalized country code top-level domains registered 2012 (2012): ICANN begins accepting applications for new generic top-level domain names 2013 (2013): Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation 2014 (2014): NetMundial international Internet governance proposal 2016 (2016): ICANN contract with U.S. Dept. of Commerce ends, IANA oversight passes to the global Internet community on October 1st Examples of Internet services: 1989 (1989): AOL dial-up service provider, email, instant messaging, and web browser 1990 (1990): IMDb Internet movie database 1994 (1994): Yahoo! web directory 1995 (1995): Amazon online retailer 1995 (1995): eBay online auction and shopping 1995 (1995): Craigslist classified advertisements 1995 (1995): AltaVista search engine 1996 (1996): Outlook (formerly Hotmail) free web-based e-mail 1996 (1996): RankDex search engine 1997 (1997): Google Search 1997 (1997): Babel Fish automatic translation 1998 (1998): Yahoo Groups (formerly Yahoo! Clubs) 1998 (1998): PayPal Internet payment system 1998 (1998): Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator 1999 (1999): 2ch Anonymous textboard 1999 (1999): i-mode mobile internet service 1999 (1999): Napster peer-to-peer file sharing 2000 (2000): Baidu search engine 2001 (2001): 2chan Anonymous imageboard 2001 (2001): BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing 2001 (2001): Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2003 (2003): LinkedIn business networking 2003 (2003): Myspace social networking site 2003 (2003): Skype Internet voice calls 2003 (2003): iTunes Store 2003 (2003): 4chan Anonymous imageboard 2003 (2003): The Pirate Bay, torrent file host 2004 (2004): Facebook social networking site 2004 (2004): Podcast media file series 2004 (2004): Flickr image hosting 2005 (2005): YouTube video sharing 2005 (2005): Reddit link voting 2005 (2005): Google Earth virtual globe 2006 (2006): Twitter microblogging 2007 (2007): WikiLeaks anonymous news and information leaks 2007 (2007): Google Street View 2007 (2007): Kindle, e-reader and virtual bookshop 2008 (2008): Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) 2008 (2008): Dropbox cloud-based file hosting 2008 (2008): Encyclopedia of Life, a collaborative encyclopedia intended to document all living species 2008 (2008): Spotify, a DRM-based music streaming service 2009 (2009): Bing search engine 2009 (2009): Google Docs, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service 2009 (2009): Kickstarter, a threshold pledge system 2009 (2009): Bitcoin, a digital currency 2010 (2010): Instagram, photo sharing and social networking 2011 (2011): Google+, social networking 2011 (2011): Snapchat, photo sharing 2012 (2012): Coursera, massive open online courses 2016 (2016): TikTok, video sharing and social networking

Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications^[1] and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals) and computers, as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage and audiovisual, that enable users to access, store, transmit, understand and manipulate information.

ICT is also used to refer to the convergence of audiovisuals and telephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or link system. There are large economic incentives to merge the telephone networks with the computer network system using a single unified system of cabling, signal distribution, and management. ICT is an umbrella term that includes any communication device, encompassing radio, television, cell phones, computer and network hardware, satellite systems and so on, as well as the various services and appliances with them such as video conferencing and distance learning. ICT also includes analog technology, such as paper communication, and any mode that transmits communication.^[2]

ICT is a broad subject and the concepts are evolving.^[3] It covers any product that will store, retrieve, manipulate, process, transmit, or receive information electronically in a digital form (e.g., personal computers including smartphones, digital television, email, or robots). Skills Framework for the Information Age is one of many models for describing and managing competencies for ICT professionals in the 21st century.^[4]

Etymology

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The phrase "information and communication technologies" has been used by academic researchers since the 1980s.^[5] The abbreviation "ICT" became popular after it was used in a report to the UK government by Dennis Stevenson in 1997,^[6] and then in the revised National Curriculum for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2000. However, in 2012, the Royal Society recommended that the use of the term "ICT" should be discontinued in British schools "as it has attracted too many negative connotations".^[7] From 2014, the National Curriculum has used the word computing, which reflects the addition of computer programming into the curriculum.^[8]

Variations of the phrase have spread worldwide. The United Nations has created a "United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force" and an internal "Office of Information and Communications Technology".^[9]

Monetization

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The money spent on IT worldwide has been estimated as US$3.8 trillion^[10] in 2017 and has been growing at less than 5% per year since 2009. The estimated 2018 growth of the entire ICT is 5%. The biggest growth of 16% is expected in the area of new technologies (IoT, Robotics, AR/VR, and AI).^[11]

The 2014 IT budget of the US federal government was nearly $82 billion.^[12] IT costs, as a percentage of corporate revenue, have grown 50% since 2002, putting a strain on IT budgets. When looking at current companies' IT budgets, 75% are recurrent costs, used to "keep the lights on" in the IT department, and 25% are the cost of new initiatives for technology development.^[13]

The average IT budget has the following breakdown:^[13]

• 34% personnel costs (internal), 31% after correction
• 16% software costs (external/purchasing category), 29% after correction
• 33% hardware costs (external/purchasing category), 26% after correction
• 17% costs of external service providers (external/services), 14% after correction

The estimated amount of money spent in 2022 is just over US$6 trillion.^[14]

Technological capacity

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The world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986 to 15.8 in 1993, over 54.5 in 2000, and to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007, and some 5 zettabytes in 2014.^[15][16] This is the informational equivalent to 1.25 stacks of CD-ROM from the earth to the moon in 2007, and the equivalent of 4,500 stacks of printed books from the earth to the sun in 2014. The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 432 exabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 715 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1993, 1.2 (optimally compressed) zettabytes in 2000, and 1.9 zettabytes in 2007.^[15] The world's effective capacity to exchange information through two-way telecommunication networks was 281 petabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 471 petabytes in 1993, 2.2 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2000, 65 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007,^[15] and some 100 exabytes in 2014.^[17] The world's technological capacity to compute information with humanly guided general-purpose computers grew from 3.0 × 10^8 MIPS in 1986, to 6.4 x 10^12 MIPS in 2007.^[15]

Sector in the OECD

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The following is a list of OECD countries by share of ICT sector in total value added in 2013.^[18]

Rank	Country	ICT sector in %	Relative size
1	South Korea	10.7	10.7
2	Japan	7.02	7.02
3	Ireland	6.99	6.99
4	Sweden	6.82	6.82
5	Hungary	6.09	6.09
6	United States	5.89	5.89
7	India	5.87	5.87
8	Czech Republic	5.74	5.74
9	Finland	5.60	5.6
10	United Kingdom	5.53	5.53
11	Estonia	5.33	5.33
12	Slovakia	4.87	4.87
13	Germany	4.84	4.84
14	Luxembourg	4.54	4.54
15	Switzerland	4.63	4.63
16	France	4.33	4.33
17	Slovenia	4.26	4.26
18	Denmark	4.06	4.06
19	Spain	4.00	4
20	Canada	3.86	3.86
21	Italy	3.72	3.72
22	Belgium	3.72	3.72
23	Austria	3.56	3.56
24	Portugal	3.43	3.43
25	Poland	3.33	3.33
26	Norway	3.32	3.32
27	Greece	3.31	3.31
28	Iceland	2.87	2.87
29	Mexico	2.77	2.77

ICT Development Index

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The ICT Development Index ranks and compares the level of ICT use and access across the various countries around the world.^[19] In 2014 ITU (International Telecommunication Union) released the latest rankings of the IDI, with Denmark attaining the top spot, followed by South Korea. The top 30 countries in the rankings include most high-income countries where the quality of life is higher than average, which includes countries from Europe and other regions such as "Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Japan, Macao (China), New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States; almost all countries surveyed improved their IDI ranking this year."^[20]

The WSIS process and development goals

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On 21 December 2001, the United Nations General Assembly approved Resolution 56/183, endorsing the holding of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing today's information society.^[21] According to this resolution, the General Assembly related the Summit to the United Nations Millennium Declaration's goal of implementing ICT to achieve Millennium Development Goals. It also emphasized a multi-stakeholder approach to achieve these goals, using all stakeholders including civil society and the private sector, in addition to governments.

To help anchor and expand ICT to every habitable part of the world, "2015 is the deadline for achievements of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which global leaders agreed upon in the year 2000."^[22]

In education

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There is evidence that, to be effective in education, ICT must be fully integrated into the pedagogy. Specifically, when teaching literacy and math, using ICT in combination with Writing to Learn^[23][24] produces better results than traditional methods alone or ICT alone.^[25] The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), a division of the United Nations, has made integrating ICT into education as part of its efforts to ensure equity and access to education. The following, which was taken directly from a UNESCO publication on educational ICT, explains the organization's position on the initiative.

Information and Communication Technology can contribute to universal access to education, equity in education, the delivery of quality learning and teaching, teachers' professional development and more efficient education management, governance, and administration. UNESCO takes a holistic and comprehensive approach to promote ICT in education. Access, inclusion, and quality are among the main challenges they can address. The Organization's Intersectoral Platform for ICT in education focuses on these issues through the joint work of three of its sectors: Communication & Information, Education and Science.^[26]

Despite the power of computers to enhance and reform teaching and learning practices, improper implementation is a widespread issue beyond the reach of increased funding and technological advances with little evidence that teachers and tutors are properly integrating ICT into everyday learning.^[27] Intrinsic barriers such as a belief in more traditional teaching practices and individual attitudes towards computers in education as well as the teachers own comfort with computers and their ability to use them all as result in varying effectiveness in the integration of ICT in the classroom.^[28]

Mobile learning for refugees

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Main article: Mobile learning for refugees

School environments play an important role in facilitating language learning. However, language and literacy barriers are obstacles preventing refugees from accessing and attending school, especially outside camp settings.^[29]

Mobile-assisted language learning apps are key tools for language learning. Mobile solutions can provide support for refugees' language and literacy challenges in three main areas: literacy development, foreign language learning and translations. Mobile technology is relevant because communicative practice is a key asset for refugees and immigrants as they immerse themselves in a new language and a new society. Well-designed mobile language learning activities connect refugees with mainstream cultures, helping them learn in authentic contexts.^[29]

Developing countries

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Africa

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ICT has been employed as an educational enhancement in Sub-Saharan Africa since the 1960s. Beginning with television and radio, it extended the reach of education from the classroom to the living room, and to geographical areas that had been beyond the reach of the traditional classroom. As the technology evolved and became more widely used, efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa were also expanded. In the 1990s a massive effort to push computer hardware and software into schools was undertaken, with the goal of familiarizing both students and teachers with computers in the classroom. Since then, multiple projects have endeavoured to continue the expansion of ICT's reach in the region, including the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which by 2015 had distributed over 2.4 million laptops to nearly two million students and teachers.^[30]

The inclusion of ICT in the classroom, often referred to as M-Learning, has expanded the reach of educators and improved their ability to track student progress in Sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, the mobile phone has been most important in this effort. Mobile phone use is widespread, and mobile networks cover a wider area than internet networks in the region. The devices are familiar to student, teacher, and parent, and allow increased communication and access to educational materials. In addition to benefits for students, M-learning also offers the opportunity for better teacher training, which leads to a more consistent curriculum across the educational service area. In 2011, UNESCO started a yearly symposium called Mobile Learning Week with the purpose of gathering stakeholders to discuss the M-learning initiative.^[30]

Implementation is not without its challenges. While mobile phone and internet use are increasing much more rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa than in other developing countries, the progress is still slow compared to the rest of the developed world, with smartphone penetration only expected to reach 20% by 2017.^[30] Additionally, there are gender, social, and geo-political barriers to educational access, and the severity of these barriers vary greatly by country. Overall, 29.6 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa were not in school in the year 2012, owing not just to the geographical divide, but also to political instability, the importance of social origins, social structure, and gender inequality. Once in school, students also face barriers to quality education, such as teacher competency, training and preparedness, access to educational materials, and lack of information management.^[30]

Growth in modern society and developing countries

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In modern society, ICT is ever-present, with over three billion people having access to the Internet.^[31] With approximately 8 out of 10 Internet users owning a smartphone, information and data are increasing by leaps and bounds.^[32] This rapid growth, especially in developing countries, has led ICT to become a keystone of everyday life, in which life without some facet of technology renders most of clerical, work and routine tasks dysfunctional.

The most recent authoritative data, released in 2014, shows "that Internet use continues to grow steadily, at 6.6% globally in 2014 (3.3% in developed countries, 8.7% in the developing world); the number of Internet users in developing countries has doubled in five years (2009–2014), with two-thirds of all people online now living in the developing world."^[20]

Limitations

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However, hurdles are still large. "Of the 4.3 billion people not yet using the Internet, 90% live in developing countries. In the world's 42 Least Connected Countries (LCCs), which are home to 2.5 billion people, access to ICTs remains largely out of reach, particularly for these countries' large rural populations."^[33] ICT has yet to penetrate the remote areas of some countries, with many developing countries dearth of any type of Internet. This also includes the availability of telephone lines, particularly the availability of cellular coverage, and other forms of electronic transmission of data. The latest "Measuring the Information Society Report" cautiously stated that the increase in the aforementioned cellular data coverage is ostensible, as "many users have multiple subscriptions, with global growth figures sometimes translating into little real improvement in the level of connectivity of those at the very bottom of the pyramid; an estimated 450 million people worldwide live in places which are still out of reach of mobile cellular service."^[31]

Favourably, the gap between the access to the Internet and mobile coverage has decreased substantially in the last fifteen years, in which "2015 was the deadline for achievements of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which global leaders agreed upon in the year 2000, and the new data show ICT progress and highlight remaining gaps."^[22] ICT continues to take on a new form, with nanotechnology set to usher in a new wave of ICT electronics and gadgets. ICT newest editions into the modern electronic world include smartwatches, such as the Apple Watch, smart wristbands such as the Nike+ FuelBand, and smart TVs such as Google TV. With desktops soon becoming part of a bygone era, and laptops becoming the preferred method of computing, ICT continues to insinuate and alter itself in the ever-changing globe.

Information communication technologies play a role in facilitating accelerated pluralism in new social movements today. The internet according to Bruce Bimber is "accelerating the process of issue group formation and action"^[34] and coined the term accelerated pluralism to explain this new phenomena. ICTs are tools for "enabling social movement leaders and empowering dictators"^[35] in effect promoting societal change. ICTs can be used to garner grassroots support for a cause due to the internet allowing for political discourse and direct interventions with state policy^[36] as well as change the way complaints from the populace are handled by governments. Furthermore, ICTs in a household are associated with women rejecting justifications for intimate partner violence. According to a study published in 2017, this is likely because "access to ICTs exposes women to different ways of life and different notions about women's role in society and the household, especially in culturally conservative regions where traditional gender expectations contrast observed alternatives."^[37]

In health care

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• Telehealth
  • A review found that in general, outcomes of such ICT-use – which were envisioned as early as 1925^[38] – are or can be as good as in-person care with health care use staying similar.^[39]
• Artificial intelligence in healthcare
• Software for COVID-19 pandemic mitigation
• mHealth
• Clinical decision support system and expert system
• Health administration and hospital information system
• Other health information technology and health informatics

In science

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Applications of ICTs in science, research and development, and academia include:

• Internet research
• Online research methods
• Science communication and communication between scientists
• Scholarly databases
• Applied metascience

Models of access

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Scholar Mark Warschauer defines a "models of access" framework for analyzing ICT accessibility. In the second chapter of his book, Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide, he describes three models of access to ICTs: devices, conduits, and literacy.^[40] Devices and conduits are the most common descriptors for access to ICTs, but they are insufficient for meaningful access to ICTs without third model of access, literacy.^[40] Combined, these three models roughly incorporate all twelve of the criteria of "Real Access" to ICT use, conceptualized by a non-profit organization called Bridges.org in 2005:^[41]

1. Physical access to technology
2. Appropriateness of technology
3. Affordability of technology and technology use
4. Human capacity and training
5. Locally relevant content, applications, and services
6. Integration into daily routines
7. Socio-cultural factors
8. Trust in technology
9. Local economic environment
10. Macro-economic environment
11. Legal and regulatory framework
12. Political will and public support

Devices

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The most straightforward model of access for ICT in Mark Warschauer's theory is devices.^[40] In this model, access is defined most simply as the ownership of a device such as a phone or computer.^[40] Warschauer identifies many flaws with this model, including its inability to account for additional costs of ownership such as software, access to telecommunications, knowledge gaps surrounding computer use, and the role of government regulation in some countries.^[40] Therefore, Warschauer argues that considering only devices understates the magnitude of digital inequality. For example, the Pew Research Center notes that 96% of Americans own a smartphone,^[42] although most scholars in this field would contend that comprehensive access to ICT in the United States is likely much lower than that.

Conduits

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A conduit requires a connection to a supply line, which for ICT could be a telephone line or Internet line. Accessing the supply requires investment in the proper infrastructure from a commercial company or local government and recurring payments from the user once the line is set up. For this reason, conduits usually divide people based on their geographic locations. As a Pew Research Center poll reports, Americans in rural areas are 12% less likely to have broadband access than other Americans, thereby making them less likely to own the devices.^[43] Additionally, these costs can be prohibitive to lower-income families accessing ICTs. These difficulties have led to a shift toward mobile technology; fewer people are purchasing broadband connection and are instead relying on their smartphones for Internet access, which can be found for free at public places such as libraries.^[44] Indeed, smartphones are on the rise, with 37% of Americans using smartphones as their primary medium for internet access^[44] and 96% of Americans owning a smartphone.^[42]

Literacy

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In 1981, Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole studied a tribe in Liberia, the Vai people, who have their own local script. Since about half of those literate in Vai have never had formal schooling, Scribner and Cole were able to test more than 1,000 subjects to measure the mental capabilities of literates over non-literates.^[45] This research, which they laid out in their book The Psychology of Literacy,^[45] allowed them to study whether the literacy divide exists at the individual level. Warschauer applied their literacy research to ICT literacy as part of his model of ICT access.

Scribner and Cole found no generalizable cognitive benefits from Vai literacy; instead, individual differences on cognitive tasks were due to other factors, like schooling or living environment.^[45] The results suggested that there is "no single construct of literacy that divides people into two cognitive camps; [...] rather, there are gradations and types of literacies, with a range of benefits closely related to the specific functions of literacy practices."^[40] Furthermore, literacy and social development are intertwined, and the literacy divide does not exist on the individual level.

Warschauer draws on Scribner and Cole's research to argue that ICT literacy functions similarly to literacy acquisition, as they both require resources rather than a narrow cognitive skill. Conclusions about literacy serve as the basis for a theory of the digital divide and ICT access, as detailed below:

There is not just one type of ICT access, but many types. The meaning and value of access varies in particular social contexts. Access exists in gradations rather than in a bipolar opposition. Computer and Internet use brings no automatic benefit outside of its particular functions. ICT use is a social practice, involving access to physical artifacts, content, skills, and social support. And acquisition of ICT access is a matter not only of education but also of power.^[40]

Therefore, Warschauer concludes that access to ICT cannot rest on devices or conduits alone; it must also engage physical, digital, human, and social resources.^[40] Each of these categories of resources have iterative relations with ICT use. If ICT is used well, it can promote these resources, but if it is used poorly, it can contribute to a cycle of underdevelopment and exclusion.^[45]

Environmental impact

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In the early 21st century a rapid development of ICT services and electronical devices took place, in which the internet servers multiplied by a factor of 1000 to 395 million and its still increasing. This increase can be explained by Moore's law, which states, that the development of ICT increases every year by 16–20%, so it will double in numbers every four to five years.^[46] Alongside this development and the high investments in increasing demand for ICT capable products, a high environmental impact came with it. Software and Hardware development as well as production causing already in 2008 the same amount of CO₂ emissions as global air travels.^[46]

There are two sides of ICT, the positive environmental possibilities and the shadow side. On the positive side, studies proved, that for instance in the OECD countries a reduction of 0.235% energy use is caused by an increase in ICT capital by 1%.^[47] On the other side the more digitization is happening, the more energy is consumed, that means for OECD countries 1% increase in internet users causes a raise of 0.026% electricity consumption per capita and for emerging countries the impact is more than 4 times as high.

Currently the scientific forecasts are showing an increase up to 30700 TWh in 2030 which is 20 times more than it was in 2010.^[47]

To tackle the environmental issues of ICT, the EU commission plans proper monitoring and reporting of the GHG emissions of different ICT platforms, countries and infrastructure in general. Further the establishment of international norms for reporting and compliance are promoted to foster transparency in this sector.^[48]

Moreover it is suggested by scientists to make more ICT investments to exploit the potentials of ICT to alleviate CO₂ emissions in general, and to implement a more effective coordination of ICT, energy and growth policies.^[49] Consequently, applying the principle of the coase theorem makes sense. It recommends to make investments there, where the marginal avoidance costs of emissions are the lowest, therefore in the developing countries with comparatively lower technological standards and policies as high-tech countries. With these measures, ICT can reduce environmental damage from economic growth and energy consumption by facilitating communication and infrastructure.

ICTs could also be used to address environmental issues, including climate change, in various ways, including ways beyond education.^[50][51][52]

•  This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Text taken from A Lifeline to learning: leveraging mobile technology to support education for refugees​, UNESCO, UNESCO. UNESCO.

Look up ICT or information and communications technology in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• ICT Facts and Figures

Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data and information processing, and storage. Information technology is an application of computer science and computer engineering.

The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones. Several products or services within an economy are associated with information technology, including computer hardware, software, electronics, semiconductors, internet, telecom equipment, and e-commerce.^[1][a]

An information technology system (IT system) is generally an information system, a communications system, or, more specifically speaking, a computer system — including all hardware, software, and peripheral equipment — operated by a limited group of IT users, and an IT project usually refers to the commissioning and implementation of an IT system.^[3] IT systems play a vital role in facilitating efficient data management, enhancing communication networks, and supporting organizational processes across various industries. Successful IT projects require meticulous planning and ongoing maintenance to ensure optimal functionality and alignment with organizational objectives.^[4]

Although humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating, analysing and communicating information since the earliest writing systems were developed,^[5] the term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)."^[6] Their definition consists of three categories: techniques for processing, the application of statistical and mathematical methods to decision-making, and the simulation of higher-order thinking through computer programs.^[6]

Based on the storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical (3000 BC – 1450 AD), mechanical (1450 – 1840), electromechanical (1840 – 1940), and electronic (1940 to present).^[5]

Ideas of computer science were first mentioned before the 1950s under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, where they had discussed and began thinking of computer circuits and numerical calculations. As time went on, the field of information technology and computer science became more complex and was able to handle the processing of more data. Scholarly articles began to be published from different organizations.^[7]

During the early computing, Alan Turing, J. Presper Eckert, and John Mauchly were considered some of the major pioneers of computer technology in the mid-1900s. Giving them such credit for their developments, most of their efforts were focused on designing the first digital computer. Along with that, topics such as artificial intelligence began to be brought up as Turing was beginning to question such technology of the time period.^[8]

Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, probably initially in the form of a tally stick.^[9] The Antikythera mechanism, dating from about the beginning of the first century BC, is generally considered the earliest known mechanical analog computer, and the earliest known geared mechanism.^[10] Comparable geared devices did not emerge in Europe until the 16th century, and it was not until 1645 that the first mechanical calculator capable of performing the four basic arithmetical operations was developed.^[11]

Electronic computers, using either relays or valves, began to appear in the early 1940s. The electromechanical Zuse Z3, completed in 1941, was the world's first programmable computer, and by modern standards one of the first machines that could be considered a complete computing machine. During the Second World War, Colossus developed the first electronic digital computer to decrypt German messages. Although it was programmable, it was not general-purpose, being designed to perform only a single task. It also lacked the ability to store its program in memory; programming was carried out using plugs and switches to alter the internal wiring.^[12] The first recognizably modern electronic digital stored-program computer was the Manchester Baby, which ran its first program on 21 June 1948.^[13]

The development of transistors in the late 1940s at Bell Laboratories allowed a new generation of computers to be designed with greatly reduced power consumption. The first commercially available stored-program computer, the Ferranti Mark I, contained 4050 valves and had a power consumption of 25 kilowatts. By comparison, the first transistorized computer developed at the University of Manchester and operational by November 1953, consumed only 150 watts in its final version.^[14]

Several other breakthroughs in semiconductor technology include the integrated circuit (IC) invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959, silicon dioxide surface passivation by Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick in 1955,^[15] the first planar silicon dioxide transistors by Frosch and Derick in 1957,^[16] the MOSFET demonstration by a Bell Labs team,^{[17][18][19][20]} the planar process by Jean Hoerni in 1959,^[21][22][23] and the microprocessor invented by Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin, Masatoshi Shima, and Stanley Mazor at Intel in 1971. These important inventions led to the development of the personal computer (PC) in the 1970s, and the emergence of information and communications technology (ICT).^[24]

By 1984, according to the National Westminster Bank Quarterly Review, the term information technology had been redefined as "the convergence of telecommunications and computing technology (...generally known in Britain as information technology)." We then begin to see the appearance of the term in 1990 contained within documents for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).^[25]

Innovations in technology have already revolutionized the world by the twenty-first century as people have gained access to different online services. This has changed the workforce drastically as thirty percent of U.S. workers were already in careers in this profession. 136.9 million people were personally connected to the Internet, which was equivalent to 51 million households.^[26] Along with the Internet, new types of technology were also being introduced across the globe, which has improved efficiency and made things easier across the globe.

As technology revolutionized society, millions of processes could be completed in seconds. Innovations in communication were crucial as people increasingly relied on computers to communicate via telephone lines and cable networks. The introduction of the email was considered revolutionary as "companies in one part of the world could communicate by e-mail with suppliers and buyers in another part of the world...".^[27]

Not only personally, computers and technology have also revolutionized the marketing industry, resulting in more buyers of their products. In 2002, Americans exceeded $28 billion in goods just over the Internet alone while e-commerce a decade later resulted in $289 billion in sales.^[27] And as computers are rapidly becoming more sophisticated by the day, they are becoming more used as people are becoming more reliant on them during the twenty-first century.

Electronic data processing or business information processing can refer to the use of automated methods to process commercial data. Typically, this uses relatively simple, repetitive activities to process large volumes of similar information. For example: stock updates applied to an inventory, banking transactions applied to account and customer master files, booking and ticketing transactions to an airline's reservation system, billing for utility services. The modifier "electronic" or "automatic" was used with "data processing" (DP), especially c. 1960, to distinguish human clerical data processing from that done by computer.^[28][29]

Early electronic computers such as Colossus made use of punched tape, a long strip of paper on which data was represented by a series of holes, a technology now obsolete.^[30] Electronic data storage, which is used in modern computers, dates from World War II, when a form of delay-line memory was developed to remove the clutter from radar signals, the first practical application of which was the mercury delay line.^[31] The first random-access digital storage device was the Williams tube, which was based on a standard cathode ray tube.^[32] However, the information stored in it and delay-line memory was volatile in the fact that it had to be continuously refreshed, and thus was lost once power was removed. The earliest form of non-volatile computer storage was the magnetic drum, invented in 1932^[33] and used in the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer.^[34]

IBM introduced the first hard disk drive in 1956, as a component of their 305 RAMAC computer system.^[35]: 6 Most digital data today is still stored magnetically on hard disks, or optically on media such as CD-ROMs.^{[36]: 4–5} Until 2002 most information was stored on analog devices, but that year digital storage capacity exceeded analog for the first time. As of 2007^[update], almost 94% of the data stored worldwide was held digitally:^[37] 52% on hard disks, 28% on optical devices, and 11% on digital magnetic tape. It has been estimated that the worldwide capacity to store information on electronic devices grew from less than 3 exabytes in 1986 to 295 exabytes in 2007,^[38] doubling roughly every 3 years.^[39]

Database Management Systems (DMS) emerged in the 1960s to address the problem of storing and retrieving large amounts of data accurately and quickly. An early such system was IBM's Information Management System (IMS),^[40] which is still widely deployed more than 50 years later.^[41] IMS stores data hierarchically,^[40] but in the 1970s Ted Codd proposed an alternative relational storage model based on set theory and predicate logic and the familiar concepts of tables, rows, and columns. In 1981, the first commercially available relational database management system (RDBMS) was released by Oracle.^[42]

All DMS consist of components; they allow the data they store to be accessed simultaneously by many users while maintaining its integrity.^[43] All databases are common in one point that the structure of the data they contain is defined and stored separately from the data itself, in a database schema.^[40]

In the late 2000s (decade), the extensible markup language (XML) has become a popular format for data representation. Although XML data can be stored in normal file systems, it is commonly held in relational databases to take advantage of their "robust implementation verified by years of both theoretical and practical effort."^[44] As an evolution of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), XML's text-based structure offers the advantage of being both machine- and human-readable.^[45]

Data transmission has three aspects: transmission, propagation, and reception.^[46] It can be broadly categorized as broadcasting, in which information is transmitted unidirectionally downstream, or telecommunications, with bidirectional upstream and downstream channels.^[38]

XML has been increasingly employed as a means of data interchange since the early 2000s,^[47] particularly for machine-oriented interactions such as those involved in web-oriented protocols such as SOAP,^[45] describing "data-in-transit rather than... data-at-rest".^[47]

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 roughly doubled every 14 months between 1986 and 2007; the per capita capacity of the world's general-purpose computers 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 every 12.3 years.^[38]

Massive amounts of data are stored worldwide every day, but unless it can be analyzed and presented effectively it essentially resides in what have been called data tombs: "data archives that are seldom visited".^[48] To address that issue, the field of data mining — "the process of discovering interesting patterns and knowledge from large amounts of data"^[49] — emerged in the late 1980s.^[50]

The technology and services IT provides for sending and receiving electronic messages (called "letters" or "electronic letters") over a distributed (including global) computer network. In terms of the composition of elements and the principle of operation, electronic mail practically repeats the system of regular (paper) mail, borrowing both terms (mail, letter, envelope, attachment, box, delivery, and others) and characteristic features — ease of use, message transmission delays, sufficient reliability and at the same time no guarantee of delivery. The advantages of e-mail are: easily perceived and remembered by a person addresses of the form user_name@domain_name (for example, somebody@example.com); the ability to transfer both plain text and formatted, as well as arbitrary files; independence of servers (in the general case, they address each other directly); sufficiently high reliability of message delivery; ease of use by humans and programs.

The disadvantages of e-mail include: the presence of such a phenomenon as spam (massive advertising and viral mailings); the theoretical impossibility of guaranteed delivery of a particular letter; possible delays in message delivery (up to several days); limits on the size of one message and on the total size of messages in the mailbox (personal for users).

A search system is software and hardware complex with a web interface that provides the ability to look for information on the Internet. A search engine usually means a site that hosts the interface (front-end) of the system. The software part of a search engine is a search engine (search engine) — a set of programs that provides the functionality of a search engine and is usually a trade secret of the search engine developer company. Most search engines look for information on World Wide Web sites, but there are also systems that can look for files on FTP servers, items in online stores, and information on Usenet newsgroups. Improving search is one of the priorities of the modern Internet (see the Deep Web article about the main problems in the work of search engines).

Companies in the information technology field are often discussed as a group as the "tech sector" or the "tech industry."^[51][52][53] These titles can be misleading at times and should not be mistaken for "tech companies," which are generally large scale, for-profit corporations that sell consumer technology and software. From a business perspective, information technology departments are a "cost center" the majority of the time. A cost center is a department or staff which incurs expenses, or "costs," within a company rather than generating profits or revenue streams. Modern businesses rely heavily on technology for their day-to-day operations, so the expenses delegated to cover technology that facilitates business in a more efficient manner are usually seen as "just the cost of doing business." IT departments are allocated funds by senior leadership and must attempt to achieve the desired deliverables while staying within that budget. Government and the private sector might have different funding mechanisms, but the principles are more or less the same. This is an often overlooked reason for the rapid interest in automation and artificial intelligence, but the constant pressure to do more with less is opening the door for automation to take control of at least some minor operations in large companies.

Many companies now have IT departments for managing the computers, networks, and other technical areas of their businesses. Companies have also sought to integrate IT with business outcomes and decision-making through a BizOps or business operations department.^[54]

In a business context, the Information Technology Association of America has defined information technology as "the study, design, development, application, implementation, support, or management of computer-based information systems".^{[55][page needed]} The responsibilities of those working in the field include network administration, software development and installation, and the planning and management of an organization's technology life cycle, by which hardware and software are maintained, upgraded, and replaced.

Information services is a term somewhat loosely applied to a variety of IT-related services offered by commercial companies,^[56][57][58] as well as data brokers.

• 
  U.S. Employment distribution of computer systems design and related services, 2011^[59]
• 
  U.S. Employment in the computer systems and design related services industry, in thousands, 1990–2011^[59]
• 
  U.S. Occupational growth and wages in computer systems design and related services, 2010–2020^[59]
• 
  U.S. projected percent change in employment in selected occupations in computer systems design and related services, 2010–2020^[59]
• 
  U.S. projected average annual percent change in output and employment in selected industries, 2010–2020^[59]

The field of information ethics was established by mathematician Norbert Wiener in the 1940s.^[60]: 9 Some of the ethical issues associated with the use of information technology include:^{[61]: 20–21}

• Breaches of copyright by those downloading files stored without the permission of the copyright holders
• Employers monitoring their employees' emails and other Internet usage
• Unsolicited emails
• Hackers accessing online databases
• Web sites installing cookies or spyware to monitor a user's online activities, which may be used by data brokers

Research suggests that IT projects in business and public administration can easily become significant in scale. Research conducted by McKinsey in collaboration with the University of Oxford suggested that half of all large-scale IT projects (those with initial cost estimates of $15 million or more) often failed to maintain costs within their initial budgets or to complete on time.^[62]

• Information and communications technology (ICT)
• IT infrastructure
• Outline of information technology
• Knowledge society

• Allen, T.; Morton, M. S. Morton, eds. (1994), Information Technology and the Corporation of the 1990s, Oxford University Press.
• Gitta, Cosmas and South, David (2011). Southern Innovator Magazine Issue 1: Mobile Phones and Information Technology: United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation. ISSN 2222-9280.
• Gleick, James (2011).The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Price, Wilson T. (1981), Introduction to Computer Data Processing, Holt-Saunders International Editions, ISBN 978-4-8337-0012-2.
• Shelly, Gary, Cashman, Thomas, Vermaat, Misty, and Walker, Tim. (1999). Discovering Computers 2000: Concepts for a Connected World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Course Technology.
• Webster, Frank, and Robins, Kevin. (1986). Information Technology — A Luddite Analysis. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

• Learning materials related to Information technology at Wikiversity
• Media related to Information technology at Wikimedia Commons
• Quotations related to Information technology at Wikiquote