What is ICT/Information Technology?

What is ICT/Information Technology?

• ICT/Information Technology is a discipline that involves the understanding and design of computers and computational processes, the field of computing/computation.
• ICT/Information Technology is a mixture and application of applied Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, and Complexity Theories/Algorithms to understand and/or model information.
• A central focus of ICT is on processes for handling and manipulating information.
• ICT and Computer Science may not differ if seen in their general form.
• However, using strict computing terms, differences exist between ICT and Computer Science differences exist.
• Computer Science refers to the processes used to create computer applications/programs with all theories behind them.
• Information and Communications Technology (ICT) or Information Technology refers to the application of computer programs to aid or solve business/organizational processes.

Difference of ICT/IT and COMPSCI

• Computer Science deals more with the creation of hardware and software, with the creation of computer software
• Examples of Computer Science topics include CPUs and motherboards
• Information and Communications Technology (ICT/IT) is concerned with maintaining computers and networks and installing, updating, and fixing software issues.

What is a Computer?

• A computer is an electronic device that transforms data into useful information.
• A computer is a machine that performs a variety of tasks according to specific instructions.
• It is a data processing machine that accepts data via an input device.
• The processor manipulates data according to a program.

Basic Functions of a Computer

• Accept data
• Store data
• Process data
• Retrieve the stored data or output generated information as and when required.

Characteristics of Computers

• Speed
• Accuracy
• Reliability
• Storage
• Diligence
• Versatility
• Resource Sharing

Classification of Computers According to Purpose

• General Purpose Computers are designed to perform a variety of tasks.
• Most devices used in homes, schools, and offices are general-purpose computers.
• Special Purpose Computers are designed to handle a specific problem or to perform a single function.
• Special purpose computers are used for airline reservations, weather forecasting, satellite tracking, and air traffic control.

Classification of Computers According to Type of Data Handled

• Analog Computers function on data in the form of continuously variable quantities that cannot be counted.
• Analog computers measure continuous physical magnitudes like speed, temperature, pressure, and voltage.
• Digital Computers operate with information, numerical physical quantities that can be counted or represented in a digital form, working on digits like 0's and 1's.
• Hybrid Computers exhibit features of analog and digital computers.
• The digital component serves as a controller and for logical operations.
• The analog component serves as a solver of differential equations.
• Hybrid computers are used in robotics and process control.

Classification of Computers According to Functionality and Size

• Microcomputers are the smallest of the computer family designed for individual users.
• Microcomputers include desktop, laptop, tablet-PC, and hand-held models.
• Minicomputers, sometimes called mid-range computers, meet the computing needs of several people in small to medium-sized business environments and are commonly used for data processing.
• Minicomputers can support 4 to about 200 simultaneous users.
• Mainframe Computers can run multiple different operating systems at the same time and are large for multi-processing.
• Mainframe Computers are also called "Big Iron,” have large cabinets.
• They perform bulk data processing and are used for tasks such as census and statistics.
• Supercomputers are special-purpose machines designed to maximize the numbers of FLOPS (floating point operation per second).
• Supercomputers process a great deal of information.
• Supercomputers make extensive calculations quickly and are the fastest, costliest, and most powerful computers available.
• Embedded Computers are "computers on a chip".

Computer History

• Computer technology is rapidly evolving with innovations in technologies
• Computer development is divided into generations characterized by remarkable improvements from the previous generations.

Limitations of Computers

• Computers can't think alone or independently.
• Computers are subject to occasional breakdown or malfunction and have no feelings.

Earliest Computing Tools

• Sand Tables are known to be the earliest device for computation, consisting of three grooves in the sand with a maximum of 10 pebbles in each groove.
• Abacus consist of sliding beads arranged on a rack, which has two parts: upper and lower, the upper part contains two beads and the lower part contains five beads per wire.
• Numbers are represented by the position of the beads on the rack.
• In the upper part of the rack, a raised bead denotes 0, whereas a lowered bead denotes the digit 5.
• In the lower part, a raised bead stands for 1 and a lowered bead stands for 0.
• Napier Bones, created in 1614 by John Napier, a Scottish mathematician, are a small instrument made of 10 rods on which the multiplication table was engraved and made from strips of ivory bones.
• The Napier bones device enabled rapid multiplication if one of the numbers was of one digit.
• Slide Rules are marked with logarithmic scales and used for rapid calculations.
• Before the advent of the pocket calculator, the slide rule was the most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering.
• A Logarithm represents the power to which a fixed number (the base) must be raised to produce a given number.

Zeroth Generation - Mechanical Era

• In 1642, Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher, invented the first functional automatic calculator called Pascaline (also called Arithmetic Machine).
• The first calculator or adding machine to be produced in any quantity and actually used, it could only perform addition and subtraction, with numbers being entered by manipulating its dials.
• In 1694, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, a German mathematician, extended Pascal's design to perform multiplication and division and to find the square root, it's machine is known as Stepped Reckoner.
• The Stepped Reckoner was the first calculator that could perform all four arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
• In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard, a French textile weaver, invented a power loom (Jacquard Loom) with an automatic card reader.
• This power loom used a series of cards (punched cards) with holes punched at different positions to control a sequence of operations.
• Charles Babbage, a professor of Mathematics, invented the first multi-purpose machine, the Difference Engine in 1823, which was never completed, the Difference Engine was an automatic mechanical calculator design to tabulate polynomial functions.
• Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine is considered the first general-purpose programmable computer, large as a house and was powered by 6 steam engines it was a Successor of Difference Engine
• Herman Hollerith invented one of the first commercial machines which used punch cards to tabulate and process the data collected in the United States census.
• Hollerith's electronic machine was able to read the information on the cards and process it electronically.
• In 1896, Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company, named IBM (International Business Machines).
• Howard Aiken, an American mathematician, developed MARK-I under IBM.
• MARK-I was capable of performing addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, and table reference.
• MARK-I it was extremely slow, noisy and bulky roughly 50 ft long, 8 ft high and weighed 5 tons.

First Generation - Vacuum Tubes Era (Late 1930s - Early 1940s)

• The first generation of computers were very large.
• First generation computers often took up an entire room, and were very expensive to operate.
• A great amount of electricity was used and generated a lot of heat, causing malfunctions.
• Computers of this era used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic drums for memory.
• Vacuum tubes were large bulb-like elements used filaments and plates enclosed in a glass vacuumed envelop
• Vacuum tubes consumed a great deal of power, burnt out easily and needed replaced.
• The first-generation computers used vacuum tube technology, were large and required a lot of space for installation.
• They were nonportable and slow, were very expensive to operate, and used a large amount of electricity.
• These machines were unreliable and prone to frequent hardware failures, requiring constant maintenance.
• Examples of first generation computers include; ABC (Atansoff Berry Computer), Colossus, John Von Neumann machine, ENIAC, EDVAC, EDSAC, and UNIVAC which the first commercially available electronic computer.
• John Von Neumann developed the concept of storing a program in memory.

Second Generation – Transistor Era (1940's – Early 1960's)

• The invention of the transistor marked the start of the second generation, since transistors are small.
• The computer's physical size was greatly reduced.
• Second generation computers became smaller, faster, cheaper, energy-efficient, and more reliable.
• Magnetic cores were used as primary memory, and magnetic disks as secondary storage devices.
• Transistors replace vacuum tubes, used magnetic cores for random memory, and used low-level Programming Languages.
• Supercomputers (LARC and IBM 7030) were implemented.
• Second Generation computers were had 10,000 transistors, not as expensive, gave less heat and became smaller.
• Transistor-based machines were smaller than first generation computers, were more portable and generated less amount of heat.
• Second-generation computers still required air conditioning, and manual assembly of units was still mandated.

Third Generation (1960's - 1970's)

• The development of the integrated circuit started the third-generation computers.
• Integrated circuits replaced individually wired transistors.
• Scientists were managed to fit even more components on a single chip, called a semiconductor,.
• Integrated Circuits are s small electronic device made of a semiconductor material.
• Developed in the 1950s by Jack Kilby, of Texas Instruments, and Robert Noyce, of Fairchild Semiconductor.
• third-generation computers used small-scale integration (SSI) circuits with 10 devices per chip)
• Medium scale integrated (MSI) circuits with 100 devices per chip are also used.
• An operating system that allowed machines to run different programs.
• Introduction of UNIX and simpler programming languages such as BASIC. ,
• The third generation computers were based on integrated circuit (IC) technology, decreased computational time from microseconds to nanoseconds.
• These computers were more portable and reliable than the second-generation, commercial production became easier and cheaper, and were more easily portable.

Fourth Generation - Microprocessors (Early 1970's - Present)

• The microprocessor is the characteristic of the fourth generation computers.
• They are capable of performing all of the functions of a computer's central processing unit with circuits containing millions of transistors.
• Examples include: Altair 8800(1975), Apple II, CRAY-I, Apple Lisa (1983), GUI, Internet, and the World Wide Web
• Apple Lisa (1983) was the first commercial personal computer to use graphical user interface(GUI) at a initial price of $10,000.
• Fourth-generation computers are microprocessor-based systems and very small and are the cheapest among all the previous-generation computers.
• GUI and pointing devices enable the users to learn to use the computer quickly, these computers are portable and quite reliable and can lead to better communication, and sharing.

Fifth Generation (Present and Beyond)

• The fifth generation uses superconductors characterized by true artificial intelligence with various types of optical disks.
• The new capabilities of the fifth generation include voice recognition, imitate human reasoning, and translate human language.
• "Fifth Generation" is a term used to describe a leap beyond human existing machines with machines starting in the 1990s that attempt to mimic the thought process and reasoning of experts in specific areas.
• Fifth-generation computers use super large-scale integrated (SLSI) chips and enable parallel processing to access several instructions in the same time.
• The characteristics of fifth-generation computers include to simulate and reproduce human behavior (thinking, reasoning, speaking using Artificial Intelligence(AI).