COMPUTERS MAKE THE WORLD SMALLER AND SMARTER

The ability of tiny computing devices to control complex operations has transformed
the way many tasks are performed, ranging from scientific research to producing
consumer products. Tiny computers on a chip are used in medical equipment, home
appliances, cars and toys. Workers use handheld computing devices to collect data a,
at a customer site, to generate forms, to control inventory, and to serve as desktop
organizers.
Not only is computing equipment getting smaller, it is getting more sophisticated.
Computers are part of many machines and devices that once required continual
human supervision and control. Today, computers in security systems result in safer
environments, computers in cars improve energy efficiency, and computers in phones
provide features such as call forwarding, call monitoring, and call answering.
These smart machines are designed to take over some of the basic tasks previously
performed by people; by so doing, they make life a little easier and a little more
pleasant. Smart cards store vital information such as health records, drivers licenses,
bank balances, and so on. Smart phones, cars and appliances with built in computers
can programmed to better meet individual needs. A smart house has a built-in
monitoring system that can turn lights on and off, open and close windows, operate
the oven, and more.
With small computing devices available for performing smart tasks like, cooking
dinner, programming the VCR, and controlling the flow of information in an
organization, people are able to spend more time doing what they often do best
being creative. Computers can help people work more creativity.
Multimedia systems are know for their educational and entertainment value, which we
call edutainment. Multimedia combines text with sound, video animation, and
graphics, which greatly enhances the interaction between user and machine and can
make information more interesting and appealing to people. Expert systems software
enables computers to think like expert. Medical diagnosis expert systems, for example,
can help doctors pinpoint a patients illness, suggest further tests, and prescribe
appropriate drugs.
Connectivity enables computers and software that might otherwise be incompatible to
communicate and to share resources. Now that computers are proliferating in many
areas and networks are available for people to access data and communication with
others, personal somputers are becoming interpersonal PCs. They have the potential
to signife that significantly improve the way we relate to each other. Many people
today telecommute that is, use their computers to stay in touch with the office while
they are working at home. With the proper tools, hospital staff can get a diagnosis
ftom a medical expert hundreds or thousands of miles away. Similarly, the disabled
can communicate more effectively with others using computers.
Distance learning and videoconferencing are concepts made possible with the use of
an electornic classroom or boardroom accessible to people in remote locations. Vast
databases of information are currently available to users of the Internet, all of whom
can send mail messages to each other. The information super highway is designed to
significantly expand this interactive connectivity so that people all over the world will
have free access to all these resources.
People power is critical to ensuring that hardware, software, and connectivity are
effectively intergrated in a socially responsible way. People, computer users and
computer professionals are the ones who will decide which hardware, software, and
networks endure and how great an impact they will have on our lives. Ultimately
people power must be exercised to ensure that computers are used not only efficiently
but in a socially responsible way.

PREHISTORY OF COMPUTERS
The first use of the word computer was recorded in 1613. It referred to a person who
carried out calculationst, or computations, and the word continued with the same
mening until the middle of the 20th century. From the end of the 19th century the word
began to take on its more familiar meaning, a machine that carries out computations.
Limited-function early computers
The story of the modern computer begins with two separate technologies, automated
calculation and programmability. However no single device can be identified as the
earliest computer, partly because of the inconsistent application of that term. A few
devices are worth mentioning though, like some mechanical aids to computing, which
were very successful and survived for centuries until the advent of the electronic
calculator, like the Sumerian abacus, designed around 2500 BC of which a descendant
won a speed competition against a modern desk calculating machine in Japan in 1946,
the slide rules, inveted in the 1620s, which were carried on five Apollo space missions,
including to the moon and arguably the astrolabe and the Antikythera mechanism, an
ancient astronomical computer built by Greeks around 80 BC. The Greek
mathematician Hero of Alexandria (c. 10-70 AD) built a mechanical theater which
performed a play lasting 10 minutes and was operated by a complex system of ropes
and drums that might be considered to be a means of deciding which parts of the
mechanism performed which actions and when. This is the essence of
programmability.
Around the end of the 10th century, the French monk Gerbert dAurillac brought back
from Spain the drawings of a machine invented by the Moors that answered either Yes
or No to the questions it was asked. Again in the 13 th century, the monks Albertus
Magnus and Roger Bacon built talking androids without any further development
(Albertus Magnus complained that he had wasted forty years of his life when Thomas
Aquinas, terrified by his machine, destroyed it).
In 1642, the Renaissance saw the invention of the mechanical calculator, a device that
could perform all four arithmetic operations without relying on human intelligence. The
mechanical calculator was at the root of the development of computers in two
separate ways. Initially, it was in trying to develop more powerful and more flexible
calculators that the computer was first theorized by Charles Babbage and then
developed. Secondly, development of a low-cost electronic calculator, successor to the
mechanical calculator, resulted in the development by Intel of the first commercially
available microprocessor integrated circuit.
First general-purpose computers
In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the textile loom by
introducing a series of punched paper cards as a template which allowed his loom to
weave intricate patterns automatically. The resulting Jacquard loom was an important
step in the development of computers because the use of punched cards to define
woven patterns can be viewed as an early, albeit limited, form of programmability.
It was the fusion of automatic calculation with programmability that produced the first
recognizable computers. In 1837, Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and
design a fully programmable mechanical computers, his analytical engine. Limited
finances and Babbages inability to resist tinkering with the design meant that the
device was never completed nevertheless his son, Henry Babbage, completed a
simplified version of the analytical engines computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave
a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906. This machine was
given to the Science museum in South Kensington in 1910.