Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Chapter 1: Our Digital Planet

Creating Communities on the Living Web
-MySpace creates an online community experience for young people
-Flickr creates a community for people to share pictures
Living in A Non-Digital World
-Computers are no longer a luxury but a commodity
-Computers and their applications are involved in all aspects of our daily life
Computers in perspective
-Every Computer in use today follows the basic plan laid out by Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace
-The computer is an incredibly versatile tool
-It can compute your taxes or deploy a missile.
-All computers take in information called input and give out information called output
-The Computer's versatility is built upon its hardware (the physical part) Software (the instructions that tells hardware how to transform the input data into the necessary output.
-The first real computers: In 1939, Knrad Zuse completed the first programmable, general-purpose digital computer.
-At about the same time, the British government was assembling a top-secret team of mathematicians and engineers to crack Nazi military codes.
In 19943, the team led by mathematician Alan Turing and others completed Colossus, considered by many to be the first electronic digital computers.
-In 1939, Iowa State University professor John Atanasoff developed what could have been the first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
-In 1944, Thanks to one million grant from IBM, Harvard professor Howard Aiken developed the Mark I.
John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert helped the US effort in World War II by constructing a machine to calculate trajectory tables for new guns.
-ENIAC: Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
-After the war, Mauchly and Eckert started a private company called Sperry and created UNIVAC I, the first general purpose commercial computer.
-Vacuum tubes were used in early computers.
-Transistors replaced vacuum tubes starting in 1956
-By mid-1960s transistors were replaced by integrated circuits.
-Integrated circuits brought:
  • increased reliability
  • Smaller size
  • higher speed
  • higher efficiency
  • lower cost
-In 1971, the first microprocessor was invented by Intel engineers.
-The personal computer revolution began in 1970: Apple, Commodore, Tandy
Desktop computers have not completely replaced computers, which have also evolved.
Embedded Computers
-Special purpose computer: dedicated computers that perform specific tasks such as controlling the temperature and humidity, monitoring your heart rate, monitoring your house security system
-The program is etched on silicon so it cannot be altered. This is called firmware.
Personal Computers: PCs serve a single user at a time. Common applications include: word processing, accounting, gaming, enjoying digital music and video
Workstations:
-High end desktop computers with massive computing power used for high-end interactive applications
-portable computers: machines that are not tied to the desktop such as notebooks and handheld computers.
Servers:
-computers designed to provide software and other resources to other computers over a network
Mainframes and Super Computers:
-Mainframes are used by large organizations, such as banks and airlines, for big computing jobs. They communicate with mainframe through terminals. Multiple communications at one time through process of time sharing
-Supercomputers: For power users who need access to the fastest most powerful computers made.
-The Emergence of Networks: to connect devices together and in the 1960s, Internet developed with backing of the US government.
-The Internet explosion-over a billion people with Internet access by the end of 2005
Electronic mail also known as E-Mail
World Wide Web-WWW
-led the Internets transformation from a text-only environment into a multimedia landscape incorporating pictures, animation, sounds, and video
Web Browsers
-programs that, in effect, serve as navigable Windows into the web
Hypertext Links
-Tie together millions of Web pages created by diverse authors.
Internet supports varied activities
-eBay used to make international transactions
-real-time multi player games.
To command or open something, you open brackets put the command in, and close the brackets.
To close something, you must open brackets, put a back slash, and close the brackets.
In the history of our society, we have had: an agricultural age, an industrial age, now we are in the information age
-more and more people earn their livings working with words, numbers, and ideas.
Explanations: Clarifying Technology
-Computer literacy is already improving our day to day lives and careers
Applications: computers in action
-Applications Enable you to use a computer for specific purposes.
Implications: Social and Ethical Issues
-The threat to personal privacy posed by large databases and computer networks
-The hazards of high-tech crime and the difficulty of keeping data secure
-The difficulty of defining and protecting intellectual property in an all digital age
-The threat of automation and the dehumanization of work
-The abuse of information as a tool of political and economic power
-The emergence of bio-digital technology
-The dangers of dependence on complex technology
Bio digital: using technology for science
Consequences of Bio-Digital Technology:
-we become so dependent on it that we begin to lose our own skills
- black outs
-computers taking over for humans-loss of jobs
-Computers have evolved at an incredible pace since Charles Babbage's plan for an Analytical Engine.
-Computers today come in all shapes ansizes, with specific types being wll-suited for particular jobs.
-Conneting to a network enhances the calue and power of a computer
  • Internet
  • WWW
  • Email

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