Information and communications technology

Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extended term for information technology (IT) which stresses the role of unified communications[1] and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage, and audio-visual systems, which enable users to access, store, transmit, and manipulate information.[2]

The term ICT is also used to refer to the convergence of audio-visual and telephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or link system. There are large economic incentives (huge cost savings due to elimination of the telephone network) to merge the telephone network with the computer network system using a single unified system of cabling, signal distribution and management.

However, ICT has no universal definition, as "the concepts, methods and applications involved in ICT are constantly evolving on an almost daily basis."[3] The broadness of ICT covers any product that will store, retrieve, manipulate, transmit or receive information electronically in a digital form, e.g. personal computers, digital television, email, robots. For clarity, Zuppo provided an ICT hierarchy where all levels of the hierarchy "contain some degree of commonality in that they are related to technologies that facilitate the transfer of information and various types of electronically mediated communications".[4] Skills Framework for the Information Age is one of many models for describing and managing competencies for ICT professionals for the 21st century.[5]

Etymology

The phrase information and communication technology has been used by academic researchers since the 1980s,[6] and the abbreviation ICT became popular after it was used in a report to the UK government by Dennis Stevenson in 1997,[7] and in the revised National Curriculum for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2000. But in 2012, the Royal Society recommended that ICT should no longer be used in British schools "as it has attracted too many negative connotations",[8] and with effect from 2014 the National Curriculum uses the word computing, which reflects the addition of computer programming into the curriculum.[9]

Variations of the phrase have spread worldwide, with the United Nations creating a "United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force" and an internal "Office of Information and Communications Technology".[10]

Monetization

The money spent on IT worldwide has been most recently estimated as US $3.5 trillion and is currently growing at 5% per year, doubling every 15 years.[11] The 2014 IT budget of US federal government is 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 cost of new initiatives for technology development.[11]

The average IT budget has the following breakdown:[11]

Technological capacity

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.[13][14] 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.[13] 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,[13] and some 100 exabytes in 2014.[15] 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.[13]

ICT sector in the OECD

The following is a list of OECD countries by share of ICT sector in total value added in 2013.[16]

Rank Country ICT sector in % Relative size
1  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  Czech Republic 5.74 5.74
 
8  Finland 5.60 5.6
 
9  United Kingdom 5.53 5.53
 
10  Estonia 5.33 5.33
 
11  Slovakia 4.87 4.87
 
12  Germany 4.84 4.84
 
13  Luxembourg 4.54 4.54
 
14  Netherlands 4.44 4.44
 
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

The ICT Development Index ranks and compares the level of ICT use and access across the various countries around the world.[17] In 2014 ITU (International Communications 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 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."[18]

The WSIS process and ICT development goals

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.[19] 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."[20]

In education

Today's society shows the ever-growing computer-centric lifestyle, which includes the rapid influx of computers in the modern classroom.
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 promoting ICT in education. Access, inclusion and quality are among the main challenges they can address. The Organization's Intersectral Platform for ICT in education focuses on these issues through the joint work of three of its sectors: Communication & Information, Education and Science.[21]

Today

In modern society ICT is ever-present, with over three billion people having access to the Internet.[22] With approximately 8 out of 10 Internet users owning a smartphone, information and data are increasing by leaps and bounds.[23] 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."[18]

However, hurdles are still at 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."[24] 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."[22]

Favorably, the gap between the access to the Internet and mobile coverage has decreased substantially in the last fifteen years, in which "2015 is 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."[20] ICT continues to take on 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 smart watches, 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"[25] and coined the term accelerated pluralism to explain this new phenomena. ICTs are tools for "enabling social movement leaders and empowering dictators"[26] 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[27] as well as change the way complaints from the populace are handled by governments.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Murray, James (2011-12-18). "Cloud network architecture and ICT - Modern Network Architecture". ITKnowledgeExchange. TechTarget. Retrieved 2013-08-18.
  2. ↑ "Information and Communication Technology from". FOLDOC. 2008-09-19.
  3. ↑ "ICT - What is it?". www.tutor2u.net. Retrieved 2015-09-01.
  4. ↑ Zuppo, Colrain M. "Defining ICT in a Boundaryless World: The Development of a Working Hierarchy" (PDF). International Journal of Managing Information Technology (IJMIT). p. 19. Retrieved 2016-02-13.
  5. ↑ https://www.computer.org/web/pressroom/framework
  6. ↑ William Melody et al., Information and Communication Technology: Social Sciences Research and Training: A Report by the ESRC Programme on Information and Communication Technologies, ISBN 0-86226-179-1, 1986. Roger Silverstone et al., "Listening to a long conversation: an ethnographic approach to the study of information and communication technologies in the home", Cultural Studies, 5(2), pages 204–227, 1991.
  7. ↑ The Independent ICT in Schools Commission, Information and Communications Technology in UK Schools: An Independent Inquiry, 1997. Impact noted in Jim Kelly, What the Web is Doing for Schools, Financial Times, 2000.
  8. ↑ Royal Society, Shut down or restart? The way forward for computing in UK schools, 2012, page 18.
  9. ↑ Department for Education, "National curriculum in England: computing programmes of study".
  10. ↑ United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technology, About
  11. 1 2 3 "IT Costs – The Costs, Growth And Financial Risk Of Software Assets". OMT-CO Operations Management Technology Consulting GmbH. Retrieved 26 June 2011.
  12. ↑ http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/egov_docs/2014_budget_priorities_20130410.pdf
  13. 1 2 3 4 "The World's Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information", Martin Hilbert and Priscila López (2011), Science (journal), 332(6025), 60-65; see also "free access to the study" and "video animation".
  14. ↑ " Information in the Biosphere: Biological and Digital Worlds ", Gillings, M. R., Hilbert, M., & Kemp, D. J. (2016), Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 31(3), 180–189; free access to the article http://escholarship.org/uc/item/38f4b791
  15. ↑ [http:// 10.1016/j.telpol.2016.01.006 "The bad news is that the digital access divide is here to stay: Domestically installed bandwidths among 172 countries for 1986–2014"], Martin Hilbert (2016), Telecommunications Policy; free access to the article http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2jp4w5rq
  16. ↑ "Figure 1.9 Share of ICT sector in total value added, 2013". doi:10.1787/888933224163.
  17. ↑ "Measuring the Information Society" (PDF). International Telecommunication Union. 2011. Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  18. 1 2 "ITU releases annual global ICT data and ICT Development Index country rankings - librarylearningspace.com". Retrieved 2015-09-01.
  19. ↑ "Basic information : about wsis". International Telecommunication Union. 17 January 2006. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
  20. 1 2 "ICT Facts and Figures – The world in 2015". ITU. Retrieved 2015-09-01.
  21. ↑ "ICT in Education". Unesco. Unesco. Retrieved 10 March 2016.
  22. 1 2 "ITU releases annual global ICT data and ICT Development Index country rankings". www.itu.int. Retrieved 2015-09-01.
  23. ↑ "Survey: 1 In 6 Internet Users Own A Smartwatch Or Fitness Tracker". ARC. Retrieved 2015-09-01.
  24. ↑ "ITU releases annual global ICT data and ICT Development Index country rankings". www.itu.int. Retrieved 2015-09-01.
  25. ↑ Bimber, Bruce (1998-01-01). "The Internet and Political Transformation: Populism, Community, and Accelerated Pluralism". Polity. 31 (1): 133–160. doi:10.2307/3235370. JSTOR 3235370.
  26. ↑ Hussain, Muzammil M.; Howard, Philip N. (2013-03-01). "What Best Explains Successful Protest Cascades? ICTs and the Fuzzy Causes of the Arab Spring". International Studies Review. 15 (1): 48–66. doi:10.1111/misr.12020. ISSN 1521-9488.
  27. ↑ Kirsh, David (2001). "The Context of Work". Human Computer Interaction.

Further reading

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