Chapter 1 Digital Planet

Creating community on the living web
-MySpace creates a online community experience for young people
-Flickr joins people to share pictures


Living in a non digital world
-computers are no llonger a luxuryvbut a commodity
- computers and their applications are involved in all aspects of our daily life


Computers in perspective
-every computer follows the basic plan by Lady Locelace and Charles Babbage
-all computers take in input and take out output

The computers versatility is built upon its:
Hardware: the physical part
software: the information which tells how to do work


The first real computers
1939 by Conrad Zuse
-at about the same time the British government was assembling a top secret team of mathematicians and engineers to crack military codes
-1943
-the team lead by mathematician Alan Turning and others completed colossus, considered to many to be the 1st at electronic digital computer
-1939:iowa state university professor John Atanasoff developed what could have been the first electronic digital computer, the ABC (Atansoff-Berry Computer)
-1944 Thanks to a 1 million grant from IBM Jarvard professor Howard Aken developed tje Mark 1

-John Mauchly and J presper Eckert helped the US effort in world war one by constructing a machine to calculate trajectory tables for new guns
--> ENAC electronic numerical integrator and computer
-after the war, Mauchy and Eckert started a Private company called Sperry and created UNIVAC the first general purpose commercial computer
-vacuum tubes were used in the early computers
-transistors replaced the vacuums tubes starting in 1956
-by the mid 1960s transistors were replaced by integrated circuits



Integrated circuits brought:
-increased reliability
-smaller size
-higher speed
-higher effincey
-lower cost

1971 the first microprocessor was invented by Intel engineers
-the personal compiter revolution began in 1970:
-apple
-commodore
-Tandy


Desktop computers havnt completly replaced big computers, which hace also evolved
Embedded Computers
-special purpose computers: dedicated computers that preform specific tasts
--->monetering your heart rate
-->monetering your house security system
-->controlling the temperature and humidity



The program is etched on silicon so it cant be altered

Personal computer:
PCs serve as a single user at a time
common applications include
-word processing
-gaming
-media

Workstations
-High end desktop computers with massive computing power used for high end interactive power
Portable computers: machines not tied to desktops
-handheld computers (PDAs)
-notebooks (laptops)


Servers
Computers designed to provide sofware and other resources to other computers over a network

Mainframers:
-used by huge organizations, such as banks and airlines for big computing jobs
-communicate with mainframe terminals
-multiple communications at one time through process of timesharing



Supercomputers:
for power users who need acess to the fastest most poweful computers made


The emergence of networks
-connect devices together
-1960 internet developed with backing of the US government

The internet explosion- over a billion of people with internet acess by the end of 2005
-electronic mail
-email software


World Wide Web
-led the internets transformation from a test only enviorment into a multimedia landscape incorporating pictures, animation, sounds and video

Web browsers
--> programs that in effect serve at navigable windows into the web


Hypertest links
--> millions of web pages tied together created by different authors

Internet supports varied activities
-eBay used to make international transactions

In the history of our society we have had:
an agricultural age
an industrial age