Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Chapter 1: Our Digital Planet

-Creating Communites on the Living Web

  • MySpace: online community for young people.
  • Flickr: creates a community for people to share pictures

-Computers are no longer a luxury, but instead its a commodity.

- Computers and there applications are included in our daily lives.

- All computers take in information called input and give out information called output.

- Hardware: The physical part

-Software: The instruction that tells hardware how to transform the input data.

- In 1939: Konrad Zuse compeleted the first programmable, general-purpose computer.

- Around the same time the British government was assembling a top-secret team of mathematicians and engineers to crack Nazi- military codes.

- 1943: the team led by mathematicians Alan Turning and others completed Colossus, considerded by many to be the first electronic digital computer.

-1944: Thanks to a one million dollar grant from IBM, Harvard prof. Howard Aikwn developed the Mark I

-John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert helped the U.S. effort in World War II by constructing a machine to calculate trajectory tables for new guns.

-Vacuum tubes: were used in early computers.

-Transistors: replaced vacuum tubes starting in 1956

-By thw mid-1960's transistors were replaced by integrated circuits.

-Integrated circuits brought:

  • increased reliability
  • smaller size
  • higher speed
  • higher efficency
  • lower cost

- 1971: The first microproceeor was invented by Intel engineers.

- The personal computer revolution began in 1970:

  • apple
  • commodore

- Desktop computers havent completely replaced big computers, wich have also evolved.

-Embedded Computers

  • Special-purpose compter:Dedicated computers that perform specific tasks.
  • Controlling the temp. 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:

  • PC's serve a single user at a time.

-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.

- Serves

  • computeres degined to provide software and other resources to other compters over a network.

- mainframes:

  • Used by large organizations, such as airlines, for big computing jobs
  • communicate with mainframe through terminals
  • multiple communications at one time through process of timesharing.

- Supercomputers:

For power users who need access to the fastest most powerful computers made.

-The emergence of networks.

  • Connect devices together
  • 1960's: Internet deeveloped with backing of the U.S. government.

- The internet explosion-over a billiob people with Internet access by the end of 2005

-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 interantional transactions
  • Real-time multiplayer games.

-In the history of out society we have had:

  • An agricultural age
  • An industrial age

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