Information technology in polytechnics

Information technology, a recently coined term, remains susceptible to varying interpretations by different people. The intention, clearly, is to emphasize the emergence of a new technological era which manifests itself in so many unrelated disciplines and activities. The French have the tendency of inventing new words for emergent concepts such as ‘informatique’ which is computer science and technology, applications and wider social and economic implications. More recently, they have introduced the term ‘telematique’ to describe the convergence of computers and communications and ‘burotique’ for office automation. The English language seems to have a resistance to invented words. For example, informatics (the equivalent of informatique) has found only limited acceptance. The Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) has a committee entitled ‘Computing and Informatics’ where the word computing has been retained, presumably, to help those who wonder at the meaning of informatics. The suggested equivalent of ‘télématique’ by some American authors ‘teleputer’ has not caught on, therefore, we have Information Technology instead.