The history of IT (Information Technology)
The history of IT
The history of information technology (IT) is a long and storied one.
It starts with the Big Bang and the beginning of the cosmos as we know it about 15 or 20 billion years ago. It continues with the formation of the solar system and the planet earth about four billion years ago. It picks up speed with the evolution of humanity some millions and hundreds of thousands of years ago, the development of human civilization some thousands of years ago, and the Industrial Revolution’s taming of machinery and power over the last few centuries. It culminates in the invention of the vacuum tube, microchip, and sundry sequels over the last several decades.
The invention of the multi-tasking computer is the turning point.
All previous stages of cosmic and human history also involved the clash and interplay of various forms of information—whether fossils in the earth; the biological storage and dissemination of information via mechanisms like DNA; the purposeful storage and dissemination of information in clay tablets, papyri, and printed books; or the computations of the abacus or slide rule. With the invention of computers, however, human-guided manipulation of data became ever more purposeful, ever more compact, ever speedier, and ever more powerful. Ever more capable of serving goals that depend on the gathering, organizing, processing, storage, and distributing of information.
The first general-purpose and electronic computer was the behemothic ENIAC, created in the mid-40s, which made its binary calculations using vacuum tubes and could not store the instructions that ran it. By the early 60s, we had the transistor based on semiconductors to replace the vacuum tube, and punched cards to replace magnetic tape. Over the next decade and a half, individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits, whose storage capacities have expanded rapidly and incessantly.
By the 1980s, we were getting microprocessors on a single chip, personal computers in every office, and sophisticated operating systems to run a proliferation of sophisticated software. Today, everybody can tap into a complex link-up of far-flung computers called the Internet (which in the late 60s was composed of just four university computers). The IT lifelines have become so critical to our workaday flourishing that specialists from Boston IT consulting may be called in to ensure that one’s own indispensible corner of cyberspace is operating smoothly and at full potential.
Of course, human-fashioned infotech cannot (yet) do many of the things that biological systems of information that have evolved over eons can do. On the other hand, give a pro from Boston IT consulting a tough technical puzzle, and he will accomplish tasks far beyond the capacity of any non-sentient biological process. And in another million or billion years…who knows what IT systems will have accomplished?