When people hear the words "Information Technology," the first things that come to mind are computers and the Internet. It may also bring up words like "network," "intranet," "server," "firewall," "security," as well as more arcane expressions such as "router," "T-1," "Ethernet," or the mysterious and exotic-sounding "VoIP" (pronounced "voyp").
In fact, information technology is all of these things, and more. It's hardly new, however. Information technology is as old as the brain itself, if you think of the brain as an information processor. As far as I.T. being a science, even that goes back as far as the earliest attempts to communicate and store information.
And that is essentially what information technology is: the communication and storage of information, along with the ability to process and make use of the information stored. In this chapter, we'll begin with a brief history of I.T., what it comprises today, and the different major types of I.T. systems available today.
