An exploration into the social and economic effects of information technology

Whenever I find myself confronted with the type of form that one has to fill in when passing through immigration control, or registering at a hotel or applying for a credit card I can usually remember my name and address without too much difficulty but I am becoming increasingly troubled when it comes to filling in the box headed ‘occupation’. A few years ago I would have put in ‘telecommunications’ or ‘telecommunicator’ and would have felt confident that I knew what that meant even if the person reading the form did not—that is, if anyone does actually read these forms. But, during the course of last year—the year of Information Technology, IT82—it was borne upon me that telecommunications was but a sub‐set of something much bigger and grander, namely Information Technology (IT). So should I say that I am an ‘information technologist’?