Part of the History of Computing

History

When you think about computing, you may think that it has only been around in the past few years. Well, at least, since computers have been around. This idea is actually quite contradictory from the truth.

Computing actually has been around for centuries. The earliest signs of appeared between 2400BC and 1800. One may ask how someone can compute anything then. Many cultures used an abacus for calculating. This was also the first sign of numerical notations and some of the first algorithms. They created some analog programs to make calculations of the planets and stars. Between 1800 and 1935, a computer was a person who preformed the calculations. In 1801 Joseph Jacquard invented a loom, where the design or pattern of the woven fabric was controlled by punched cards. Punched cards is a stiff piece of paper that contains information with the presence of absence of holes. Some people have them at their work, where it shows what time they have clocked in or out.

The first digital computer was designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at University of Pennsylvania in 1945. It used more than 18 thousand vacuum tubes (vacuum tubes was part of the first generation computers), and it performed 5000 operations per second (now it is about 1E9 operations). However, the size was not the best side of the computer. It weighed more that 27000 kg, and was over 1000 square feet. Computers of the second generation used transistors instead of tubes but, the size was still an issue. The next generation computers fixed the size issue. It used integrated circuits which led size to decrease. Third generation computers underwent great changes and became more available for the public. IBM was the major company producing computers. Finally in 1971, Intel took a huge step in the field, and introduced the world’s first microprocessor. It changed both performance and size. Such technology is being used even now. Today there are more companies producing computers , however, most of them are using Intel and AMD chips. Every year computers become more lighter, thinner, smarter and simply better.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring for computing.

Digital Divide

Digital Divide

As we’ve talked about in most of our previous blogs, technology is important for education, communicating with others, networking with people, and much more. What if we did not have that though? Several places suffer from problems such as this. It may be weird to think of schools that do not have computers or classes on computers, but there are other places that suffer from much more. In some developing countries, the only way they have to communicate with someone in the next town over is through someone travelling there.

Some parts of China would be considered a “developing country”, however there are much more prosperous cities (Such as Shanghai and Beijing). In those relatively developed regions, it is quite easy, and convenient to get access to the Internet. In China most people talk online by using QQ, which just like MSN, and they also use a social network named “Renren”. Also, they have the ability to use their mobile devices to get connected. All those ways have become another important way to communicate with other people, besides face-to-face in the real world. Interestingly, the Chinese government does not ban or control the Internet very strictly. There are a few websites are blocked in China, however, those blocks do not affect most people’s ability to get access the Internet. While in some other parts of China, which are less developed, it is still not easy to access to the Internet. In fact, computers are rarely used as part of their daily life. There are many reasons of this situation. I think the most important reason is that they as though they do not need to use computer, or that their lives can still easily function without the Internet. This is different compared to people living in the cities,who rely more on the Internet. Generally, the more developed parts of China have rapid growth of the Internet.

Speaking of global digital divide, Kazakhstan--a country bordering China in the east, has pretty big digital divide compared to more developed countries like The United States, Russia and some European countries. The rural side of the country has minimum access to the Internet, only a few people are able to have the Internet in their own home. However, in cities the situation is much different. In the cities there are companies providing the Internet to people but, they still face a problem with the rates. For lots of money someone would usually get the low-speed Internet with a traffic limitation of up to 2 gb. If somebody wanted to have the Internet similar to what Purdue University has, they would be charged significant amount of money. Nevertheless, every year the rates for higher Internet speed have been going down. This means, for the city the amount of high-speed Internet users are growing up in the same extent. More free public areas have set up Wi-Fi, and mobile companies have started to provide the Internet as well. The gap between technology and population is shrinking because of dependence of development on technology, in my opinion.

Each year we have been seeing technology grow and grow. With technology, such as Wi-Fi, that’s being offered by nearly everyone including McDonalds, it’s much easier to access the Internet. Most will agree that this is much better compared to only a few years ago when everyone had dial up. This sort of expansion of Internet access has helped us close the digital divide for some places in America. However, we still face an issue with many schools that do not have the budget for technology. Without technology in schools students may not get as much of an education, or they may also have problems receiving skills (like typing or using Microsoft office) that most find important in the real world. This is a Cultural Capital problem that not only computer scientist have been trying to solve, but many sociologist have as well. Programs like “Box Tops for Education”, provide money to schools, which then allows them to invest in more technology for their students. Also, for some countries with a larger digital gap, companies have started programs such as “One Laptop per Child”, which allows Internet access for children in less developed countries. Hopefully in the next few years, we may see this gap become smaller and smaller.

Voting

Voting is the regular process that modern democratic society has to do to choose something. It sounds very simple. doesn’t it? Somebody comes, verifies an identification and votes for someone or something. Unlike the process that regular citizens do, the process going behind the scene is much more complicated compared to as it seems at the first time. Take a look at voting for President of US. It means all population that are eligible to vote should be involved. At this point the problems occur. How do we make sure that every vote is registered and counted ? How do I know that no one tracks my vote? How to make voting fair? That are just some problems that should be solved during the voting. However, the biggest problem is that there is no such system, device or equipment which covers all the problems simultaneously, even though there exist a lot of systems and machines for voting. For example, recently handicapped people had a person alongside to help them to vote. To keep anonymity, special machines were created in order to ease voting process handicapped people. However, such machines do not work for blind people. The point is there is no perfect system for voting yet. What is done nowadays is minimization of possibility of failure. According to statistics, 1 vote is lost per 10 million votes. In short, it is very important to make voting fair and accurate (in case if different president would be elected because of miscalculation)because it can lead history to significant changes, according to “butterfly effect” term.

The Internet

The Internet, something most of us use everyday, especially as students. We do our homework online, we look up lecture notes, apply to colleges, sign up for classes, communicate, and so much more. The Internet is vital to us, but do we ever consider where it came from, or how it got started?
The history of communication started digitally. In the 19th century Samuel FB Morse invented the telegraph. Morse code allowed two types of signals to be sent, basically a dot or a dash. When telephones came into play, communication went to analog then. Now with computer networks, and the Internet, we have switched back to digital. In the 1960’s, numerous new technologies started to emerge. One of which being ARPANET. ARPANET was the first large scale packet network, and was funded by an advanced research project agency . During the 1970’s, engineers found they could make a network that was big, fast, and inexpensive, however they had difficulty putting all three together. The Internet we know today is just a networks of networks, and has not been changed much since the 1980’s. It’s so interesting to see how flexible a design was back then, that it accommodates to the technology that we use and have today.
Most people are truly amazed by what the Internet is capable of. Obviously, people can do a lot of things like watch videos or play games just by having an Internet connection and a computer. However, Internet users are not aware of how simple the Internet actually is. What the Internet does is just send packages of data to specific addresses also known as IP address. An IP address is a kind of unique label that is assigned to all devices in the network. However, what people see on the screens of their computers is simply a process done by another computer on the other end of the network. What is really amazing that the Internet is able to connect many devices, no matter what the distance between them is. Yet, the more the distance, the slower connection speed.

the Internet can be accessed almost anywhere. On Purdue campus, we can connect to the Internet through cables in our rooms and the PAL(Purdue Ari Link) is covered in most public areas at Purdue. Students can use not only their laptops, but they may also use many other electric devices like a mobile phone or an ipad/ipod to get connected. In Purdue, many important activities depend on the use of the Internet. For me, I check my emails in Mymail, I check my grades in Blackboard, and I get my math homework done on webassign. all those things above rely on networks in the Internet. Without the Internet, we can see we will be messed up. The Internet allows students and professors to communicate and interact online, which is a more efficient way to exchange information or ideas.

Cyber security

Cyber security

From generation to generation we(people) try improve things, make them work faster, and make them more efficient. Eventually, we come to the “digital world”. Many activities we used to do it ourselves can be done easily, and faster, by a computer and the Internet now. In fact, we have to admit the importance of the Web. However, sometimes we have to use private information to get processes done. Here comes the problem. The problem is that smart “computer guys” never get tired of taking opportunity to make “easy money”, or tried stealing our information for their own purposes. Their creativity and potential are unlimited. No one can be 100% sure that everything on the Internet is safe. The tools a hacker needs to access any kind of information are programming skills and ,obviously, Internet.

It seems that computers are more and more relied on the Internet. I may feel strange if my computer can not connect to the Internet because I need to check my email and Facebook or some other things which are all required Internet connection. Not only our computers, but also a lot of other electronic devices like mobile phones and xbox. I think the meaning of cyber security for individuals is about the protection of personal information and property. All those devices we use every day may contain sensitive information such as credit card information, passwords, and some other things we probably regard them as kinds of privacy(like diary :D). If that information was stolen by someone, we would be in a lot of trouble. This makes it important to be aware of the importance of the cyber security. It’s very common that we install anti-virus software or firewalls in our computers to prevent hacking and set password for accessing to the system. Additionally, we should be very careful when some website is asking for card number. There are many ways to keep away from hacking and attacking.

When looking back on hacking, for myself, I think of the 1995 movie. The kid was “Zero Cool” and people were hacking computers for showing off, a much more glamorous activity. However the times have changed since then. People are more stealthy while hacking into your personal information, you may not realize that they’re there, and they have much more of a purpose for hacking. It’s important to know where you’re putting your information at there, who’s looking at it, and what they’re doing with it. When thinking that someone can see all my information while, lets say, I’m filing taxes on Turbo Tax online, well that’s just scary. Cyber-security is important, and something everyone should look into. You don’t want to be that person that was wondering why someone not only sent you a virus, but also took down your credit card information.

Social Networking

Social Networking. It’s something most of us check on at least once a day. It’s also been in our lives now for sometime. To say the least, it’s a normal thing to us. It allows us to keep in contact with friends, display pictures of something we have done, play online video games, and much more.

It was interesting to hear about the history of Social Networking, seeing where it started in 1997 with the site sixdegrees.com, and watching it progress all the way to Facebook. Sixdeegres.com allowed users to create profiles and find their friends, most of the people on it did not have a broad range of friends. The site still exists, but is for members only. In 2002 there was Friendster, which allowed you to meet friends of friends. Now, going on the site, it’s mostly used for online gaming. In 2003 many other social networking sites began to spring up. Myspace was a very popular one, with 66 million users. Myspace allowed you to create and edit your own profile as if it were a website. There were several sites just dedicated to “layouts”. After Myspace came both Twitter and Facebook. Twitter started as a “dialog brainstorming session”, with the original name TWTR. Today the site has 190 million users, ranging from business executives to celebrities. Facebook was originated in Harvard, with the title of “TheFacebook”. According to their site, there are over 500 million active users, the average user has 130 friends, and people spend on average 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. Social Networking, to say the least, has made a huge impact on our lives in several different ways.

I just saw the movie “Social Network” last week. This movie let me know more about this amazing website. Although Facebook is still blocked in China, there still are lot of people trying to visit Facebook or Twitter through proxy. It is reported that Facebook will officially come to China in near future. For me, I have an account on Facebook, but I rarely post anything. I do not check it very often because most of my friends in China do not use Facebook. Instead , I use another social website called RenRen.com, whose function is just like Facebook. I do the exact same things on RenRen that people here do on Facebook. When I use Facebook, I usually only accept those requests from my friends or at least people who I knew before. It is really weird that everyone online can see my photos and my phone number. My understanding of social network is that we can keep in touch with our friends on the Internet, and also meet some new friends through our current ones.

During two classes Aman Yadav introduced to us what is called "behind the scenes". It really is behind the scenes. Social Networking is a vital part of a modern life. People use it for several different purposes. People think Social Networking is created only for the purposes of socializing with others. However, the people are not aware of all hidden sides of Social Networking. As the lecturer mentioned, when people sign up for Facebook, they just skip over the "terms and conditions" part. This section contains a lot of details that can embarrass and exploit us. They can easily use our private information, own our photos, videos and etc. It seems to me that they use us to the same extent as we use their services. What really bothers me is that if a site like Facebook has so much access to our “secrets”, what about higher level organizations? Or governments? I am afraid even to imagine that.

One interesting thing that Dr. Yadav emphasized is that information is passed around the Internet in ways that people might not realize. Sure, you can control which of your friends can see which parts of your profile, but what about higher powers? According to Facebook’s terms of service, they reserve ownership of all content posted on the site by users, including photos and videos. The creators of apps can view your information and the information of your friends, unless they “uncheck” a difficult-to-find box in the privacy settings. On Twitter, all “tweets” are archived by the Library of Congress. While these sound frightening, they should not necessarily scare people away from social networking. Ultimately, the consequences of casual and careful use of social network sites are slim to none. They should, however, give people good reason to be cautious. The lesson is to be extremely careful about what information you share, educate yourself about the policies of specific social networking sites, pick your “friends” carefully, and above all else, remember that nothing anywhere on the Internet is one hundred percent “private.”