Computers and Their Uses, Spring 2007
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SYLLABUS | ASSIGNMENTS | READING | WRITING | INFOWEBS | LABS | OPINIONS
TOPICS IN COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY
A
· Computers can be very annoying to use. Windows-based personal computers, being the most popular PCs in the world, are statistically the most annoying of all.
· Artificial intelligence, defined as the attainment of human-level thinking by machines, remains the grail of computer science. Here's a look at some of the prospects and possibilities of thinking machines.
B
· Charles Babbage developed the first complex calculating machines early in the nineteenth century. His work on the difference engine and its successor, the analytical engine, conditioned the later development of digital computers. See also Ada Lovelace.
· Computer bugs were for real when Grace Hopper started programming operations for the Department of Defense in 1950. Here's an image from her notebook--note the dead moth taped to the page. Her usage was not unique or even new: Hawkins's New Catechism of Electricity (1896) notes that "The term `bug' is used to a limited extent to designate any fault or trouble in the connections or working of electric apparatus."
· Vannenar Bush, in "As We May Think," saw the development of microcomputers as a peace gift from the scientists whose terrifying weapons had just brought WW II to a close.
C
· Compact disks have revolutionized the delivery of data in audio, video, and alphanumeric form. Using laser technology to "read" data encoded as high- and low-light reflectivity patterns, CD-based input devices load digital information into memory for output to audio and video devices. Here's a short course in how it works.
· Definitions of computer literacy have
changed as the technology has developed. Here's a survey of the topic with a
working definition by
· Degrees in Computer Science have become controversial as to their immediate value in the job marketplace.
· Consumer electronics
demonstrate the pervasiveness of computer technology in our time. In a recent
article, Prof. Ron Klausewitz of
· Cookies are a controversial part of the exchange structure that governs client-server relations on the World Wide Web. Click here for the original specifications of Netscape's cookie technology.
· The emerging dominance of digital storage and retrieval of information has undermined established assumptions about copyright and intellectual property in general. "Is 'copy' still the appropriate foundational concept for copyright law in the digital age?" The National Research Council's forthcoming report, "Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age," raises the question without attempting to provide any definitive answers. Read about the report and the deliberations that produced it here.
D
· The theory that all humans are personally connected within six degrees of separation has helped researchers understand basic principles of social and digital networking.
· Distance learning applies inter- and intranetworking technology as means of delivering educational services and materials. The emergence of distance learning application has stimulated serious and probing discussion as well as considerable misgiving. Both are on view in David F. Noble's essay on the automation of higher education.
E
· Embedded computers have infiltrated almost every area of the contemporary economy. Some cars feature as many as 35 to 40 computers.
F
· Four generations of computers have
been identified as study points in the development of modern computing
technology.
Vacuum tube technology typified the first generation of
modern computers--such as the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator
(ENIAC), which weighed in at 30 tons, stretched out 80 feet, and stood two
stories high. ENIAC ran on 18,000 vacuum
tubes.
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Transistors were first applied to computers in 1955. TRADIC, made by AT&T Bell Laboratories, was the first fully transistorized computer. Three cubic feet in size, the computer used almost 800 transistors instead of vacuum tubes. Being fully transistorized allowed the computer to operate on fewer than 100 watts of power, and to run about twenty times faster than first-generation computers. |
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The development of the integrated circuit, which massed miniaturized transistors on a chip of silicon, provided a logical model for the microprocessor.
The emergence of the microprocessor completed a course of progressive development which has determined the nature and capacities of computers as we know them today. Here's a step-by-step description of how microprocessors work
H
· Hypertext is the means by which
computer users locate, navigate, and select from "webs" of linked
information resources in digital form.
The pre-eminent specimen of hypertext is the Internet, and most especially the World Wide Web, which employ the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to facilitate user access to text, graphics, and audio information stored on computers networked all over the world.
The concept of hypertext is generally credited to Vannevar Bush, whose seminal essay of 1945, "As We May Think," foreshadowed the development of the personal computer and particularly its capacity to organize and link large amounts of information. The term itself was coined in 1967 by Ted Nelson in his book Literary Machines.
But the premise behind hypertext--the ideal of extensive information easily accessible and searchable--has been important in Western culture for centuries. It has inspired the development of libraries, with their many systems of classifying and cataloging, and of publishing practices like book design, typography, and professional indexing. There are even examples of early "literary machines" which aspired to the condition of hypertext as long ago as the Renaissance.
I
· A complex of consequences has developed
around the accelerated deployment of digital information, especially in
networked (or distributed form). "Information
overload" has economic, social, psychological, and cultural
implications. It also has a history, going as far back as Gutenberg,
according to some researchers.
The emergence of the Internet has proceeded rapidly enough that many users remain uncertain as to what their favorite information resource actually is. Definitions of the Internet tend to vary based on the perspective of the questioner. Ed Krol's description of the Internet takes into account several different points of view. Rich Zellich offers a different, and somewhat controversial, take on the Internet based on the information superhighway analogy.
The Internet's popularity has generated many fears and concerns about its effects on the massive world-wide user base it has attracted. One study of the psychology of Internet use, sponsored by a group of software and hardware manufacturers, indicates a direct correlation between time spent on the World Wide Web and increased loneliness and depression.
The Internet's rapid and ongoing development have frustrated efforts to track its growth and map its indefinite coordinates. Here is one researcher's attempt to capture Internet data paths as tracked from computers at Lucent Technologies.
Other attempts at mapping the Internet can be found here.
L
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Ada Lovelace, partner and ally of Charles Babbage in developing the analytical engine, is widely credited with creating the first computer program. Her writing on the analytical engine helped Babbage understand the importance of his own invention and helped him enlist support for its development. Recent appreciations of her importance to computer programming and her emblematic status as an accomplished woman include an innovative film, Conceiving Ada, which deploys advanced computer graphics techniques to create authentic period sets. |
M
· Marshall McLuhan theorized about
contemporary media as extensions of human physical and neurological endowments.
Here is an extract from a 1964 interview in which McLuhan improvises an
analysis of electronic circuitry as an extension of
the human central nervous system.
In this article, Prof. Paul Levinson examines the
influence of McLuhan's theories on our thinking about computer technology
today.
· Memes are theoretically ideas with self-replicating properties which allow them to spread and to adapt like physical viruses. The concept was first broached by geneticist Richard Dawkins, in his controversial book "The Selfish Gene." It has since been taken up by Internet enthusiasts.
· Moore's Law, promulgated over lunch by the President of Intel, holds that the computing capacity of the microchip will double every eighteen months at no increase in cost.
· The computer's motherboard holds together the primary processing components of the CPU.
O
· Operating system software does more
than set up and maintain relations between a computer and its peripheral
devices, memory resources, and application programs. More than anything else,
the operating system determines the user's computing style and defines the
computer's functional character. The Windows family of OS software (see entry
under "annoying" above) dominates the world's desktops today.
Recently, a challenger to Microsoft's near-monopoly in the OS market has
emerged in the UNIX variant known as Linux.
Microsoft's response to the open-source operating system challenge has recently been exposed in a leaked document called the Halloween memo.
P
· Price scanners are nearly ubiquitous specimens of computer technology's absorption into mainstream culture--not least because they work so efficiently. But how do they work?
S
· Short-sighted prognostications are commonly stimulated by the emergence of new technologies. Stupid mistakes about the usefulness and potential of computers may amuse us, but they also warn us about the presumption that we can really know the future.
V
· The proliferation of PCs, and especially of
networked computers, has supplied the software virus with an environment
in which mischief and malice can have large-scale effects. Software code
written and circulated with the aim of frustrating computer users, viruses have
stimulated important developments in the area of system security. Here's a
thorough discussion of computer
viruses.
Email is a major source of viruses, especially by means of scripts or programs attached to messages. The recent Bubbleboy virus, however, functions within extended email capabilities designed to display HTML messages.
· John von Neumann had a powerful influence on the design and development of computers. A 1945 paper of his was the first written description of the "stored program concept," the design basis of all modern computers. Click here for a brief biography and description of von Neumann's contributions to computer technology.
W
· The World Wide Web has a longer history than most people realize.
Y
· The Y2K "bug" or "virus" was not really a bug or virus at all, although its destructive potential far outstripped any accidental or intentional software glitch yet seen. For a brief descriptive analysis of Y2K, click here.
Glossary of computer terms