The two words, information technology, used together, have acquired special meaning in the last few years. If we had heard them used separately, or even together, as recently as 1976, we probably would not have attached to them this special meaning. At that time, perhaps technology signified materials, tools, systems and techniques, although modern definitions of technology vary (see Bugliarello and Doner, 1979) and to the Greeks technology was ‘a discourse upon the arts, pure and applied’, because techne meant art or craft (Nuttgens, 1981). In popular parlance, information was facts, knowledge, data and news. Libraries, the printing industry, telephone exchanges, television studios, billboards, computers and sky-writing all encompassed some aspect of information technology, but scarcely anyone used these two words in everyday conversation. In fact, as recently as 1981, a British opinion poll (reported in The Times, 14 January 1982) showed that 80 per cent of those interviewed then had not yet heard of information technology.

In the Western industrialised world (that is to say, Western Europe, North America and Japan in particular) people are suddenly becoming much more aware of this, the new information technology. In a number of countries, governments have started to tell their constituents that information technology is an important factor in maintaining and perhaps enhancing economic well-being. The British Conservative Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, said in Parliament, ‘The Government fully recognises the importance of information technology for the future industrial and commercial success of the United Kingdom and the central role that the Government must play in promoting its development and application’ (Hansard, 2 July 1981). Her remarks were backed up by the newly-appointed Minister for Information Technology, the first in British history. In France, under Giscard d’Estaing, the Direction Générale des Telecommunications began a few years ago to promote ‘la télématique’, the French term for information technology, coined by Nora and Minc (1978). Both the British and the French Governments are placing special emphasis on introducing computer methods and skills into schools. In Sweden, a Commission on New Information Technology (1981) recently reported its findings. Other European governments have taken a similar line, if not with as much publicity. Canada and the United States have placed high priority on developing information technology. We can now see in Canada what is probably the widest range of working examples of the technology. In the United States, many companies are seeking to sell new information technology products and services. Commercial competition between them has increased dramatically as laws and regulations controlling communications have been amended or even rescinded in the name of adding to national economic well-being. Borrell (1981) reports that during the 1979-80 Congress, 857 bills concerning information were introduced, of which no less than 113 became law. Japan shows signs of leading the world in many sectors of the new field: the Japanese Government has fostered awareness of the technology’s potential in industry and commerce, and has actively encouraged investment and collaboration, so that major companies now share research and development costs in an effort to outstrip their American and European competitors.

Governments are saying to us that new information technology is the key to economic growth. They are also saying that it is likely to bring about substantial changes in our society. Their awareness-raising campaigns are to some extent aimed at reducing what Toffler (1970) calls ‘future shock’. Information technology, in its new guises, may change our lives, for better or worse, within a very short time. Preparing us for change may be one way of helping us to reap advantages rather than collapsing under the strain. As Bowes (1980) suggests, however, ‘information utilities’ (i.e., organisations dealing in information) are attractive to governments not only as profitable new industry but also because they can be presented as an improvement in the quality of life for many people. Proponents claim that information will be more accessible and that more information at low cost will increase opportunities for all, with the greatest gain being to those at present at a disadvantage educationally and ‘informationally’. On the other hand, Stonier’s (1981) aphorism strikes home: ‘An educated workforce learns how to exploit new technology, an ignorant one becomes its victim.’

To a remarkable extent, information is a source of power in Western society. Information technology is becoming a means of wielding power. Robertson (1981) provides estimates of the size of the information explosion in the United States: 30 billion original documents are created each year, with 630 billion pages of print going through the postal system and 100 billion pages coming off photocopiers. For each employed person, this is enough paper to fill four filing cabinets, containing twelve miles of paper. These figures will probably double in five years, he says, before the new technology takes effect. The new information technology is overtaking the old, providing more and more powerful ways to create, store, select, process, deliver and display information.

It is vital for us to arrive at some understanding of new information technology and of what benefits it can bring to many fields, including education. We must bear in mind, of course, Scriven’s (1981) dictum that information is not education. Nor is information necessarily knowledge, although knowledge is based on information (see Rich, 1980, for a discussion of knowledge in society). Bell (1980) suggests that knowledge is ‘an organised set of statements of facts or ideas, presenting a reasoned judgement or an experimental result’, and distinguishes knowledge from news or entertainment, though all contain information.

Institutions that produce or distribute information in some form are, however, classed by Machlup (1980) as belonging to the ‘knowledge industry’ sector. Knowledge industries, producing and distributing knowledge and other information, rather than goods and services, are increasing steadily their share of the national product in Western countries (Drucker, 1969; Bell, 1980). Knowledge is arguably the most important single input into modern productive systems (Stonier, 1981). It is a fact that information (including knowledge) is accumulating in many fields at rates far exceeding a worker’s capacity to absorb it. A researcher specialising in one-thousandth of the field of science and technology, amounting to 10,000,000 characters printed in, say English, needs twelve years of reading 13 hours a day, every day of the year, at 3,000 characters a minute, just to cover his part of the field once. During those twelve years, as many new characters would have been published (Licklider, 1966). Kilgour (1981) tells us that during the year to June 1980, 1.5 million titles were added to the principal North American computerised catalogue for libraries. Can new information technology help?

But what is new information technology? It would be useful to have a one-line definition to throw into dinner table conversation. ‘New information technology is new technology applied to the creation, storage, selection, transformation and distribution of information of many kinds.’ That is more than one line and does not say very much. We need a more comprehensive approach, which takes up more space and is, unfortunately, less suitable for casual use. The definition adopted by Unesco is ‘the scientific, technological and engineering disciplines and the management techniques used in information handling and processing; their applications; computers and their interaction with men and machines; and associated social, economic and cultural matters’ (quoted by Raitt, 1982). Perhaps that says too much and certainly it explains very little. What is needed is a layman’s introduction to new information technology, what it is and how it works. Part One of this book is aimed at giving just such an introduction.

One way of defining a new technology is to say what it can be used for, what functions it can perform, and to describe the symbols, codes and languages that support these functions. Another way is to survey the devices and systems that have so far grown out of the technology. But let us first look at how this new technology differs from the old.

It would be a mistake to think that the boundary between old and new information technology is perfectly sharp, but we can certainly notice very distinct differences. If change has been gradual in some branches of the technology, it has been abrupt in others. Stonier (1979) suggests that the industrial revolution brought us devices to extend our musculature, but the electronic revolution is bringing us devices, such as television and the computer, that extend our nervous system. Similarly, Hubbard (1981) points out that our old information technology depends largely upon mechanical means of carrying out its functions. The postal service, the press, the book publishing industry, the film industry, the sound recording industry, even the telephone system, could not operate without depending upon machines that have a large number of moving parts. All, including the best, of these machines are subject to wear and tear, the more so as designers find ways to speed them up. Why should machines be speeded up? To many of us, they seem fast enough already, especially those which handle information. But to others, it is very important to obtain faster means of dealing with information, with less chance of breakdown. Higher speeds mean that much more information can be handled within a given time, and information is often a source of power. People who can get vital information first, and who can select it quickly to suit their needs, are in a very powerful position indeed in Western society. This utilitarian view applies in education as well as in industry and commerce, in politics and the military.

The new information technology depends far less on mechanical means. Instead, its machines are electronic. That is to say, the moving parts have almost entirely disappeared, being replaced by ‘flows’ of electrons. We have an example in desk calculators. Twenty years ago, whether manual or powered by electric motors, they contained intricate systems of levers and gears which carried out the calculations. They were essentially mechanical devices. Today, desk calculators have no levers, no gears, but contain much more intricate systems of switches. If we press the buttons, this sets the switches in particular patterns, guiding the flow of electrons to accomplish the calculations as commanded. ‘Flow’ is perhaps not quite the right term to use: it is more accurate to think of the electrons packed into the circuits from end to end, and when the current is turned on at one end, the ‘push’ is almost instantly felt at the other end. Thus our calculation can be done almost instantaneously once the switches have been set. We set the switches in two ways: we press keys for the numbers and we press others for the functions (add, multiply, subtract or divide, for example). We use the function keys to tell the calculator what to do with the numbers.

Electronic calculators are a rather simple example of the change from old to new. New information technology depends on three complex technologies that have recently converged: computing, microelectronics and telecommunications. In each of these technologies new materials, systems, tools and techniques are being invented at an astounding rate. The three in combination offer opportunities for use or abuse that few of us ever imagined, and these opportunities are now beginning to be apparent in many fields, not least education. Can education take advantage of technology?

Jarrett (1980) offers us a popular definition of the computer as a ‘fast rule-following idiot machine’. It is fast because it is electronic, although the first ones were mechanical. It is rule-following because the patterns of its switches and the logic of its circuits are designed so that, when it processes information it will indeed follow rules that have been worked out beforehand, and it is an idiot machine because it has to follow these rules, incredibly complex though they may be.

Computers are surrounded by their own jargon, much of which is not essential to the level of understanding this chapter provides, but a few terms ought to be introduced here. The machine itself, with its various accessories, makes up the hardware (‘everything you can touch’, as somebody said). The rules or commands for the computer to follow are the software, written in one of a large number of programming languages. A set of commands is called a program (a universal spelling in English-speaking countries) and kept in electronic or other forms either in the computer itself or elsewhere. Programs can be printed out on paper, but untrained people cannot understand them, because first they must learn the appropriate language. If we want to use one of the programs to process information, we make sure that the program is in the computer or at least accessible to it electronically. We then put in (‘input’), one way or another, the information to be processed. Processing takes place very quickly, and our processed information can then be stored or displayed, or both. The display is the computer’s output and can take a variety of forms, not all of them visual displays, as we shall see.

It is quite incorrect, by the way, to think that computers can handle only numbers, because they can actually deal with words, pictures, charts, music and much else too. Consider an example: the typescript of this book was written on a ‘word processor’. Part of the word processor was a computer already programmed to undertake a number of functions. In addition, a special ‘editing’ program went into the computer before the first word of this chapter was typed in. Typing was the process of input. Editing by the author was done easily, something most writers would appreciate. The computer simply manipulated the information, that is, the words, in accordance with commands given as the text was typed or edited. Even the more complex commands, such as to move a paragraph to another page, or to another chapter, were executed very quickly indeed, with no retyping. The computer’s display of the text was on a television-like screen at first, but it stored the text in coded form on a magnetic disc. When the final version was ready, the computer controlled a printer which produced a typescript automatically at a speed of about a page a minute.

Later chapters in this book will give details of many types of devices that are used for inputting and outputting information. For the moment we should note what happens inside the computer during processing. Like the desk calculator, the computer has intricate systems of switches and circuits inside its central processing unit. These switches and circuits differ from those of the calculator in being far more intricate and more commandable. Each switch, as in the calculator, can be set in one of two electronic states: on or off. It is the pattern of ons and offs, so to speak, that provides the basic code for all information processed by the computer, including the commands or programs that it needs. This code is termed binary because it employs only two symbols: 0 for off and 1 for on. Yet combinations of Os and Is can be used to represent numbers, letters and other symbols. In fact, the binary code is extraordinarily versatile.

The 0s and 1s that make up the binary code are called bits, the term being derived from ‘binary digits’ (Bell, 1980). Fo...