Friday, August 27, 2010

WEEK 3 LECTURE
A SHORT HISTORY OF COMPUTING AND THE INTERNET

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

How far we have come technologically from predictions such as the one above from the chairman of IBM in 1943 Thomas Watson. This brings me to the subject of this week's lecture entitled 'A short History of Computing and the Internet.' A good place to start when talking about any subject is at the start, so on the subject of computers the place to start is with Charles Babbage and Lady Ada Byron.

The lecture covered the origins of the computer which had links to various adding machines, but most importantly with the 19th century Difference Engine created by Charles Babbage to calculate and print mathematical tables. Babbage who was born in 1791 and was the son of conservative English banker is credited as being the creator of the first digital computer, he also sketched out the logical structure of the modern computer. He also concieved a massive, brass, steam-powered, general-purpose mechanical computer called the Analytical Engine. Meanwhile inspired by the works of Charles Babbage, the daughter of the famous poet, Lord Byron started work on her own invention. Lady Ada Byron is noted as the first lady of computing where she is famous for conceiving of a machine which could compose and play music, produce graphics and be of everyday use. Lady Byron is also credited as concieving the first computer program.

The next most notable contributor to the history of computing is Alan Turing who while working at Bletchley Park during WW2 devised the first working computer called 'The Bombe'. This computer was used to break secret German enigma codes, which was extremely influential in the outcome of the war. Turing also concieved of the Turing test, whereby a human judge sits at a computer terminal and interacts with both a computer or a human by written communication only; if the judge cannot tell which is which then the machine has passed the test and it would be reasonable to call the computer intelligent.

During the lecture it went on to talk about the new breed of computer developers such as Xerox PARC, Apple, IBM, Microsoft and GNU/Linux. These various companies and their founders revolutionised the computer industry by bringing it out of the realm of military, government and corporate only devices to give computers an appeal and place with everyday users. These men have been on one great ride, that has made them all extremely rich individuals, but it hasn't always been easy and each of them are all integral to their respective companies. They work in a profession which grows exponentially faster than the governing laws and terminolgy created to control it. I found an interesting article featured in Time magazine which talks about that very subject.

"I see little commercial potential for the internet for at least ten years."
- Bill Gates, 1994

At the end of the lecture we talked about the influences of the internet to the history of computing. The internet started it's life off in 1969 as the US Department of Defence's Advanced Research Project Agency Network (known as ARPAnet). It was designed to provide a distributed, flexible and self-healing command network which would enable the US military to continue operating even if Soviet military missiles took out certain geographical locations on the network. Following it's creation as a network for the American military, the internet - as it became called - evolved into a network for the American academic community, starting with universities and then spreading outwards becoming something completely different.

As the internet and computers continued to evolve at exponential rates we were bombarded with new terminologies and accronyms to learn and understand. Such as MUDs (Multiple User Domains), e-mail, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), IRC (Internet Relay Chat).

REFERENCE LIST
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