Information Technology and the Law

Abstract

Information technology (IT) is a term that arose during the 1970s to describe the combination of two previously existing disciplines: computing and telecommunications. Very many definitions of the term exist ranging from the narrow, that would encompass those traditional aspects of office data processing, to the broad, that would involve the remote control and logging of manufacturing robots. IT is seen for the purpose of this book to be all those technologies that enable the development of commercial information processing systems. For example, the development of fibre optic cables to carry voice, data and video communications is an IT-enabling technology, as is the development of faster and larger capacity microprocessors.