Getting started: What is IT?

Thanks to those of you who have already started posting here! Please feel free to introduce yourself in any one of these posts. Hopefully by now you've had a chance to peruse the links I mentioned in my welcome post and, by browsing through the course blog from previous semesters, now have a good idea of what this course is about and what learning resources it may draw upon.

Please be careful when browsing through the archive not to get confused. The instructions on older posts refer to past classes.  Stay current with the narrative and you will be fine.  The new posts on this weblog (bookmark it now) will serve as your guide to the course this Fall.  It provides a running narrative with the most current entry always at the top.  If you see an error on this site, or a broken link (and you probably will!), please let me know by sending me an email.

Today I simply want to generate a meaningful discussion about what at first might seem like some very straightforward terms. By exploring the myriad possibilities these terms suggest we will mark out the territory which is often associated with Information Technology.

One of the challenges of penetrating this area indeed, is grappling with its terms. We should strive to understand the generally accepted use of terms without limiting ourselves to their traditional, or common definition.

It is tempting to compare computers with our own biological wiring.

What is a computer? Is it simply the standard configuration of a monitor, keyboard, and console? Of course it isn't. For our purposes we can say that computers are anything with a microchip. Computers can be found everywhere! If you like the biolgical analogy the defining characteristic of a computer, the CPU or central processing unit, is not unlike our brain stem.

What is hardware? It's physical. Hardware's kind of like our own physical parts - the nerves, synapses, flesh and fluid; the basic atoms that make up the human body inside and out.

What is software? Where hardware stores and transports information, software carries the instructions to drive it. As far as we're concerned software, and what you can do with it, is the important stuff. It's also vast and virtual. There is not limit to the kind of intelligence we can replicate, share, and develop by using it. Software is a bit like the mystery behind the human brain itself. Vast beyond comprehension there is untold complexity embedded in that physical shell, or gelatenous blob, that we refer as a brain. Like software there are different regions of the brain that do different things in coordination. Our brains define our character. They possess an intelligence which breathes life into a biological, chemical, and molecular framework to make us sentient beings. Software does the same to the wires, silicon, magnetic discs, and machinery that are otherwise lifeless computers.

What is networking? If you're struggling with the technical definition just think about the connections that you form with your own friends and family....that's your local network.  It's about independent people or computers communicating and coordinating. It's about relationships. Think about how news is shared by word-of-mouth. Think about how quickly and extensively a virus can spread. They say the entire world is connected by no more than six-degrees of separation. These images and this adage speak to the power of networking.  The term internetworking is often used interchangeably with just networking....but that prefix inter- meaning between really stresses the distributed and two-way nature of the computers that make up the Internet. 

What is information technology? If you insist, here's a traditional, explicit definition. It's about an intersection of intelligence and tools. Intelligence, or ideas, implies people, and processes as well as information. Tools, or technology, implies all that we create. Tools extend a part of us.   Information Technology, more strictly speaking, focuses on that intersection of human intelligence, or creativity, and these relatively newer techniques of ours which make efficient and effective use of information and communication.

But even that doesn't quite cut it, does it?  Broadly speaking there is no nook or cranny of this life that IT does not penetrate. Information Technology is not a sector, not a part of industry, not a hobby, a tool, or in any way on the margins of society. It is not the sole concern of technical specialists. Rather, Information Technology is integral to our lives. It is as much about language as it is about tool-making. Becoming IT-literate will be as vital to your success in the 21st-century as reading and writing was in the last century. If you found that you were getting-by with a limited understanding of the computer, the Internet, and their applications before, just consider how you may compare to the generation that is coming up behind you who will have been totally immersed in new media their whole lives.

(p.s. if you were ever wondering what kind of stuff would be on a class test, this entry will give you a good example).