CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Information is not only the basic of human existence. It is also the life wire for running of any organization. This is consequent upon the fact that decisions are based on information for effective decision-making and effective execution of those decisions, there must be constant information flow. Data gathered must be transmitted to the end –users after it had been processed. Information receipt processing, storage, dissemination, etc. may be instant; otherwise valuable business opportunities might be lost. That is what Information Technology (IT) seeks to do in business administration and management.
The development of information technology has come a long way. The first writing in the world of was invented by Egyptians priests around four thousand B.C. At first, the writing was a series of whole picture, which were drawn to tell a story. This took a long time and later on the priests learned to draw parts of pictures to represent the whole. Much later on still, the pictures were drawn not to represent objects, but to represent sounds. Thus the picture of a house was drawn not to represent the actual building, but the sound “Haus”. Gradually, the method of writing was improved upon until one letter was used to represent one sound. This is how the first alphabet was made. The priests wrote with a reed pen and made ink by mixing soot and gum with water.
But the scope of the writing called the HIEROGLYPHICS was restricted to priests; hence it was called SACRED writing. The writing was used to record important religious ceremonies, medical facts and records of kings and nobles. The most important writings were recorded or carved on stones while the less important records were kept on thin stripes from a reed known as PAPYRUS, a plant that grew on the banks of the River Nile. The modern word “paper” came from papyrus.
Other ancient ways of writing include the SUMMERIAN CUNELFORM, ANTHENIAN OSTRAKON, JEWISH SCROLL or parchment, which was writing on animal skin. The Bible recorded in Exodus 3`: 18, “And the lord gave Moses, when he, (God) had made as an end of speaking with him upon the mount Sinai, the two tables of stone written with the finger of God”. An Assyrian king named Assurbanipal was said to have about twenty thousand clay tablets in his private library.
For their information dissemination, the ancient world employed a number of ways. The Greek used runners. The marathon race today is in honor of an Athenian runner who not only ran all the way from Athens to Sparta to call the Spartans to the battle field, but also after the Persians had been defeated at a place called marathon, ran a further 35 kilometers to Athens to report the victory, after which he fell down dead after announcing the victory.
The old-talking drums, gongs, etc. were also used to send out information. In emergency situations, a section of the forest could be set on fire to warn people of impending or sudden enemy attack. All those various means of receiving, storing and sending information in the ancient times have been replaced by the vast array of machines in the modern world. This is what is called information technology, which refers to a host of equipment and materials, essentially computer-based that are used in the modern world for information receipt, processing, storage and dissemination.
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AN ASSESSMENT OF FARMERS’ ADAPTATION STRATEGIES TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN PARTS OF YOBE STATE, NIGERIA
