Is IT Science and Technology (S&T)?

Abstract

This study examines whether Information Technology (IT) is Science and Technology (S&T) by tracing the formation of IT and its academic and institutional development. IT emerged from information processing and computing and developed into an independent computing discipline amid the growth of Computer Science, Information Science, Engineering, Software, Information Systems, and related fields and technologies. Peirce’s early-twentieth-century classification of the sciences, together with later changes in academic fields, departments, and colleges or schools, shows computing- and information-related fields growing, differentiating, and recombining within Science and Engineering. Materials from NSF/NCSES, OECD, Japan’s NDL, and JST also place IT and its constituent fields within Science, Engineering, Technology, and S&T R&D systems. Taken together, the historical, academic, and institutional materials show IT as a field of S&T that is also widely applied across other S&T fields, organizations, industry, and society.