Formated technology and informated action: The nature of information technology

This paper is part of a series examining the fundamental nature of informatics: a term used as a convenient umbrella term to stand for the overlapping disciplinary areas of information systems, information management and information technology. The aim of the current paper is to consider some of the universal features of information technology. This is accomplished in terms of a conceptual framework established in previous work. We ground the discussion in a significant historical case: that of Hollerith's electric tabulating system which constituted one of the earliest examples of automatic data processing. Through examination of this case and the technologies used we establish an interpretation of the essence of information technology in terms of formative acts of data representation and processing.