Chapter 1 Our Digital Planet

CREATING COMMUNITIES ON THE LIVING WEB
-Myspace creates an online community experience for young planet
-Flicker creates a commuinity for ppl to share their pics

 

LIVING IN A NON-DIGITAL WORLD
- comps are commodities now a days
-comps and their applications are involoved in our daily life

 

COMPUTERS IN PERSPECTIVE
- every comp follows the basic plan of Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace
-Comps are tools
     - can compute your taxes or deploy a missile
-all comps take info called input and give out info called output
- comps versatility is bulit upon its:
     1. hardeware (physical parts)
      2. software the instructionsthat tells hardware how to transform the input data into the neccassary output

 

- the 1st comp was creaed by Konrad Zuse in 1939
- at about the same time the British gov't was assembling a top-secret team of mathematicians and engineers to crack Nazi military codes.
*-  1943: the team led by Alan Turnig and other completed Colossus considered by many to be the 1at electronic digital comp
- 1939: in Iowa State U John Atansoff (proffessor) developed what could have been the 1st electronic digital comp the Atansoff - Berry comp (ABC)
- 1944: thanx to a $1 million frant from IBM. harvard proffessor Howard Aiken developed the Mark 1.
- John Mauchly and J Presper Eckert helped the US effort in the WW2 by constructing a machine to calc trajectory tables for a new gund
         - ENIAC ( electronic Numerical Integrator and Comp)
- After the war Mauchly and Eckeryt started a private company called Sperry and created UNIVACI the 1st general-purpose commercial comp.

 

Vacuum tubes: were used in early comps
Transistors: replaced vacuum tubes in 1956
- mid 1960s: transistors were replaced by integrated circuits

 

Integrated circuits brought:

• increased rehability
• smaller size
• higher speed
• higher efficiency
• lower cost

-1971: the 1st microprocessor was invented by Intel engineers
personal comp revolution: began in 1970

• Apple
• Commodore
• Tandy

A BRIEF TAXIMONY:
- desktop comps havent completely replaced big comps which have also evolvoed
- embedded comps
- special purpose comp: dedicated comps that perform specific tasks

• controlling the temp and humidity
• monitoring your heart rate
• monitoring your house security system

- firmware: the program is etched on silicon so it cannot be altered.
PERSONAL COMPS
- PCs serve a single user at a time
      -Common applications include:

• word processing
• gaming
• media
• etc.

workstations: high- end desktop comps w/ massive computing power used for high-end interactive applications.
portable comps: machines that are not tied to desktops

• notebooks
• handheld comps (PDAs)

Servers: comps designed to provide softwares and other resources to other comp over a network

 

MAINFRAMES AND SUPER COMPS
Mainframes:

• used by large organizations such as banks and airlines, for big computing jobs
• communicate w/ mainframe through terminals
• multiple communications at 1 time through process of timesharing

Supercomps:

• For power users who need access to fastest and most powerful comps made

THE INTERNET REVOLUTION
THE EMERGENCE OF NETWORKS

• connected devices together
• 1960s: internet developed w/ backing of the U.S gov't

- the internet explosion has over a billion ppl w/ internet access by the end of 2005
Electronic mail: e-mail software
World Wide Web: led the internet;s transformation from a text-only into multimedia w/ pics, animation, sounds, video...
Web Browsers: programs that serve as navigable windows into the web when in effect
Hypertext Links: tie togehter millions of Web pgs created by diverse authors
-the internet supports varied activites
       -ebay
       - real-time: multiplayer games
- in the history of our society we have had:
     - an agricultural age
     - an industrial age

we need to know how to write a code for
you need a link that will send you to a web  pg or a link source
<xxx>
I - italic
U - underline
B - bold

<I> <U> <B> to make sure code is right make a link between them

Explanation Clarifying Technology
-comp literacy is already improving our day-to-day lives & careers

Applications: Comps in action
- apps enable you to use a comp for specific purposes

Implications: Social and Ethical Issues

• the threat to personal privacy posed by large databases and comp networkd
• the hazards of high-tech crime & the difficult of keeping data secure
• the difficutly of defing & protecting intellectual property in an all-digital age.

if u look at the address bar you can tell if something is secure

• -The threat of automation & the dehumanization of work
• -The abuse of info. as a tool of political & economic power
• -The emergence of bio-digital tech.
• -The dangers of dependance on complex tech.

biodigital: using tech for science
Examples:

1.  organizing data
2. someone lost a limb- they repair it with tech
3. microchipping animals
4. robots are taking human jobs and helping humans

Summary:
comps have evovled at an incredible pace since Charless Babbage's plan for an Analytical Engine.
Comps today come in all shapes & sizes w/ specific types being well-suited for particular jobs.
connecting to a network enhances the value & power of a comp

• Internet
• WWW
• E-mail