Birth of the computer/ Study of Wikipedia

In this weeks lecture we studied the history of the computer dating back to the beginning of information technology.

We watched a short video on cryptic codes/enigma focusing on the trackings of the Nazi movement on the second world war. These codes were studied in more detail after the war using a developed machine that analyses it.We then touched up on the themes of computer technology.

These are;
The Birth of the computer
Charles Babbage designed the Difference Engine in the 19th century which calculated and printed mathematical tables.

Xerox PARC
In the early 1970's a think tank created concepts such as the mouse, graphic user interface (GUI) and pull down menus that shaped the strcuture of computers of today.In 1975 the first PC (Personal Computer) The 0 was released but there was no language until Bill Gates joined the team and created BASIC. This gave birth to programs such as word processing, basic accounting and some games.

Apple
Apple took off after several computer nerds got together for meeting to exchange ideas about computers and displayed their latest and greatest home made PCs. started Apple first producing the Apple I - a primitive machine with a single circuit board, no case and no keyboard. It sold for $USA666.60 but they only sold fifty of them. They created their self-contained PC for people who weren't technology junkies but for people who were interested in the computer software and its possibilities, than the hardware.Tute discussionthe Animation we saw showed how packets from one computer are sent to the computer and the packet one one computer gets split up into pieces and travels to other computers and comes back and reinstalls itself all in a second.

IBM and Microsoft
IBM started of as a large conservative firm that moved slowly producing huge mainframes for big companies that grew to sucess after joining with Microsoft to create Windows.

Windows programs reduced the popularity of Apple and it looked as though there was no hope for Apple until the I-Macs were created. The debate over which computer system is better is a personal one, some people believe that Microsoft windows is better then Apple and vice versa.

Another operating system of Microsoft and IMB is Linux a free operating sytem that is alternatively used to the expensive and clunky propriety operating systems; windows, MacOS and Unix.

The Internet
The Internet is a network of networks containing servers, mainframes and personal computers. These networks use Computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies interconnected by telephone system, broadband cable and satellite services. This links people around the world in an information sharing system.

World Wide Web
The world wide web (www) emerged in the 1990s and is a particular part of the internet that merges internetworking and hypertext to globally share on servers formerly known as browsers.

Web pages are written in (HTML) Hyper Text Mark-up Language.

The web is only one application of the internet easily confused as the same thing.

Cyberspace

Cyberspace is the interconnection of reality and imagination.

Karl Popper defines three worlds of reality and the third is that which applies to Cyberspace;
A world where the public structures are produced by living minds interacting with each other and the real world. The subsets of this are religion, language, maths, art and philosophy.

Early Internet Applications
Electronic Mail~email
A virtual main system that sends documents from one sender to either one or multiple recievers.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
A system allowing you to directly download or upload files from another computer and also allows you to upload a a file including a web page onto a server.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
Real time chat system first popular in the 90s as it was the first form of online chatting in real time first known as Synchronous (a medium of communation mainly for chatting but alos file transferring).

MUDs, MOOs, MUSHes
All different variants of the same kind of program usually just known as MUDs (Multiple User Dungeon based on Dungeons and Dragons). Rather then being graphic based games the programs are text only.

Reading: New Media
New Media is always updating due to the increase use of the internet. We must constantly reavaluate the current technologies that we use along with the upcoming technologies to discover the patters that media is taking in society. New media must replace what older media could not do. The best example that can be seen of new media is the birth of the internet and its different branches it has broken off into with the extension of the world wide web. The internet has changed the world in the way we communicate as what could take a matter of days, weeks, or months to be transferred between people can now be done is a few seconds and the click of a mouse.

Tute- Review of a Wikipedia Article
I chose to review the Wikipedia article on the British comedy series Black Books. It is one of my favourite television shows and was interested to see if there was any obvious flaw to the article. From reading what had been written it appears that a basic plot outline had been made and nothing stood out to be wrong. There were citations (a few were missing) and the literature was easily displayed and layed out. Seeing as this is something that is being watched on the television it may been seen as a good source of reference if basic information was required. However if I was too look up something more academic, for example the theories behind the beginning of cancer you would be better off going to an Academic Journal where it was written by a scientist.