Computer Hardware: This Wikipedia definition was much longer than I expected... but it is good to be thorough! One quote that really surprised me was: "Personal computers...form only a small minority of computers (about 0.2% of all new computers produced in 2003)." I would have guessed that percentage to be much, much larger! It did get me to thinking, though.
Typical PC hardware: motherboard, power supply, storage controllers, video display controller, removable media devices, internal storage, sound card, networking, and other peripherals.
Moore's law: This discussion is intriguing. In the history section it is explained that Alan Turing predicted in 1950 that by 2000 we would have "computers on our desk with a billion words of memory." I'm sure that at that time, this prediction must have sounded quite far-fetched... It makes me wonder what amazing changes we will see in the next 50 years! What will be sitting on my desk, and what will I be carrying around in my hand?!
One thought that I completely agree with is how things can be a 'self-fulfilling prophecy.' When a claim is made that something will happen by a certain time, it may well drive other companies to meet that goal, so that they do not fall behind what they are expecting another company to do. What if Moore had predicted doubling but in twice the amount of time? Would we still have increased as quickly as we did, or would it have been a slower increase?
Under 'Future Trends,' several examples and thoughts are explained. These advances are so amazing--it is almost difficult to comprehend! As far as 'limits of the law' go, it is incredible that we are creating things nearly as tiny as the size of an atom. This makes sense that eventually we will hit a barrier, and not be able to get smaller. Here it is claimed that "in less than 10 years computers will be created where each molecule will have its own place, i.e. we will have completely entered the era of molecular scale production." I have tried to think about this, and tried to imagine how this will affect our lives. How different will our cars look? Or the insides of our homes? Or what other drastic changes will we see?
My favorite quote in this reading is, "Moore's law is a violation of Murphy's law. Everything gets better and better."
One thing I did not quite understand is at the end when they talked about "during the Pentium era when popular manufacturers played with public perceptions of speed, focusing on advertising the clock rate of new products." I am not sure what they mean here, and what 'clock rate' refers to. Would anyone care to enlighten me? Is this something I would have heard, and just not known the phrase?
Computer History Museum: This is really a great site! My favorite part was the exhibits:
*The Silicon Engine
*Internet History (Did you know that the timeline of the Internet began in 1962, before the word 'internet' was invented, and only 10,000 computers existed in the world? Fast forward to 1992... the internet had 1 million hosts!)
*The Computer Revolution
*Visible Storage (I loved the photos of the early calculation tools. Also, the Odyssey videogame system sure brought back memories--my siblings and I thought it was the neatest thing, but if kids today saw it, they probably wouldn't give it a chance!)
*Timeline of Computer History (I LOVED this exhibit! Click on a year, any year '39 - '94, and see what was the newest, latest, and best of the time! I never knew that the first email was sent the year I was born! Also, the 8 inch floppy diskette was invented the same year! I HIGHLY recommend this section when you have several hours to spare--you won't be bored!)
**This site has so much information to offer!
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4 comments:
Hi Jean,
I feel that my IT experience is basic, but the History of Computers Museum was sooooo interesting. Could you imagine people thinking Alan Turing was insane that he thought we would all computers? HA, I bet they are all eating their words now! ITs truly fascinating how we have evolved so much technologically in a short period of time. 50 years might sounds like a lot to some, but its so very short!
Hi Jean! Thank you for the comment. Also, I agree with you that the Computer Museaum is a nice resource. I liked that they had a lot of information online in case you don't live or are traveling to California.
Jean,
Going along the lines of thinking how technological changes will affect our home lives. I was wondering how technological changes will affect us as librarians or other library professionals first?
Since technological advances usually don't become availible for home uses right away and we see them in the workplace first. One thing I am starting to see is our reference department is using electronic databases.
I also found the computer history museum site to be helpful. Like you I enjoyed seeing the silicone engine, it was like the Moore article was brough to life.
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