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.