Objectives

There are very few other times in history when our society has been so impacted by a series of technological innovations. And as evidenced by emerging technologies, we have only seen the beginning of this information revolution. To deal with the challenge of our growing information society and globalization, information policies must be developed, which address such hot issues as privacy, intellectual property rights, and censorship. After Reading this section, you should be able to:

Information Technology and Information Systems

Figure 1

We are surrounded by information technology! But what is Information Technology? Information technology is defined as any technology, including the computer hardware, software, and telecommunications networks that enable the transmission, processing, storage, organization, and retrieval of information for the purpose of understanding, decision making, and action taking. Other types of technology include:

Communications technologies that enable humans to communicate and transmit information, e.g., telephones and televisions

Transportation technologies such as trains, planes, cars, or space craft.

These technologies may include information technologies. Information systems is defined as the combination of information technology, people, data resources, and other tools and techniques that collect, transform, and disseminate information within an organization. Early information systems did not utilize computers. An example is the library card catalog, still used in some school and community libraries. The hardware includes cabinets and index cards, the software and procedures involve cataloging schema (Dewey-Decimal System), the data is the bibliographic information on library holdings, the people are the librarians and the library patrons.

The most central part of the definition of an information system is that it should "work together to produce meaningful information for individuals and organizations." This statement contains 3 important ideas:

Information systems work together - Early information systems could exist in isolated social contexts. There was no need for exchange of information between systems. Therefore, their design was entirely independent. Today there is an increasing need for connectivity and information exchange between information systems to improve their effectiveness and efficiency.

Information systems produce meaningful information- An information system must add value to the data it contains by supporting individual or organizational decision making.

Information systems exist for people - Information systems were not developed because engineers thought they would be cool. They were developed to support human decision making. Therefore, the success of any information system is defined by its users.

Information systems may be categorized according to their purpose, their scope, or their architecture. They are often distinguished by their users and the information they produce.