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A human computer, with microscope and calculator, 1952. It was not until the mid-20th century that the word acquired its modern definition; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of the word computer was in a different sense, in a 1613 book called The Yong Mans Gleanings by the English writer Richard Brathwait: "I haue [] read the truest computer of Times, and the best ...
The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones. Several products or services within an economy are associated with information technology, including computer hardware , software , electronics, semiconductors ...
In pre-computer information systems, the data were generally stored in human-readable form. Procedures: Procedures are the policies that govern the operation of an information system. "Procedures are to people what software is to hardware" is a common analogy that is used to illustrate the role of procedures in a system.
Names of many computer terms, especially computer applications, often relate to the function they perform, e.g., a compiler is an application that compiles (programming language source code into the computer's machine language). However, there are other terms with less obvious origins, which are of etymological interest. This article lists such ...
Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications [1] and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals) and computers, as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage and audiovisual, that enable users to access, store, transmit, understand and ...
Today, the term Internet most commonly refers to the global system of interconnected computer networks, though it may also refer to any group of smaller networks. [ 16 ] When it came into common use, most publications treated the word Internet as a capitalized proper noun ; this has become less common. [ 16 ]
Information can be encoded into various forms for transmission and interpretation (for example, information may be encoded into a sequence of signs, or transmitted via a signal). It can also be encrypted for safe storage and communication. The uncertainty of an event is measured by its probability of occurrence.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to computers: . Computers – programmable machines designed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations.