Computers (2nd Reading)

While reading the second part of this book, I felt immediately more interested since this section is getting closer to the present day "personal home computer".  I was very surprised to learn that the Altair computer would not come already assembled or with a keyboard or mouse, etc.  This information proved to me how different the idea of "home computers" must have been in the beginning stages as opposed to now.  We live in a world today where most schools, offices, businesses, etc. all contain computers and rely on them for hundreds of different reasons, whether it be for communication, a program to organize transactions or for educational purposes.  The fact that now computers have basically made the telephone an obsolete appliance, one can only imagine how many are manufactured and sold these days throughout the world.  The combination of IBM and Microsoft was the first step forward in allowing computers to become what they have in the world today and this was recognized by Time Magazine in 1982, when they selected the computer as their "man of the year".  Personally, I have an Apple computer and since buying mine when I started college, I don't think I could ever own a PC by choice again.  I enjoyed reading about Steve Jobs' experience with creating his operating system.  Knowing that Engelbart invented the mouse and gave the technology demonstration known as the "mother of all demos", it was interesting to see how his team left him even though he had these brilliant ideas to start PARC.  Since I am a biased computer owner, I find it funny that Steve Jobs was the only person who wanted to keep Engelbart's ideas alive...and it paid off.

Computers pg 1-87 Analysis

Out of all the books that we have to read this semester, "Computers: The Life Story of a Technology" is probably the only one I was not excited or remotely interested to read.  That being said, I found my assumption to be correct as the book is basically fact after invention after fact after materials used to make technological advances that I can't understand after fact.  Although it wasn't the smoothest read, I did find much of the information to be interesting and helpful in having a better understanding of how far technology has come since it's beginnings.  For one thing, I never knew that computers were originally created specifically to solve math problems (even though the name makes obvious sense of this).  Honestly, computers were so far along by the time I was born, I always just assumed that the result was the initial intention.  Once I learned how many different machines and attempts were made to basically make a HUGE graphing calculator, it blew my mind.  To know that we can now videochat with complete strangers anywhere in the world that have the internet, actually see what they are doing and have a real audible conversation with them made me wonder if these programmers ever thought that their hard work would eventually evolve into something so much more than what they were doing.  The chapter on the Cold War was interesting, learning about how big of a role computers actually played/still do play in many countries' protection/armed forces/aviation.

First Post!

Creating this blog was a good experience for me especially since it's the first time I ever made one.  Being that I'm an English major at Rutgers and enjoy writing I don't know why it took me so long to actually do it, but I think I'm going to enjoy having one.  I'm not a complete stranger to blogging though, I am also in a band that is basically my life outside of school and I try to update our blog (via myspace or facebook) to keep people informed on what we've got going on as often as possible.  I never mind updating the band's blog because it's more informative than opinionated.  Personally, I don't know how I would feel about people I don't know reading my blog because it will obviously be heavily drenched with my opinions.  I could honestly care less what people think about me, but I feel that taking the time to post my opinions to the world can leave a lot of room for people to misinterpret or judge me based on single instances and situations that can be taken many different ways out of context (and why shouldn't they if I'm the one putting them out there?).  As far as my friends reading my blog, I do not think that I would not mind this at all since mostly everything I will be talking about on here are things that would come up in our normal conversations.  After looking at my technology log from Thursday until today I can see that I use the internet at least every 2 hours in my day to day life, either through my iPhone or computer.  Facebook is unfortunately, a big part of my life because I use it to promote shows for my band (and we had 3 this weekend: thurs, fri, sat).  It is honestly the easiest way to let people know what time, what venue and any other details about our shows that people would need to know.  Even though I'm not a fan of what facebook is doing to the world we live in, I definitely reap the benefits and realize that I'm no better and have no right to talk, I guess I'm just aware of the problem.  I am also in two fantasy football leagues which entails me going online to check my team, stats, etc.  Between my band e-mail and school e-mail, I feel that I am constantly checking my mailboxes throughout my day.  Last, I love music and follow several music blogs (www.thenjunderground.com is a cool one for local music if you're into that) throughout my daily routine.  In the end, it is kind of sad how connected our country and most of the world is to this fast paced, instant gratification type of lifestyle, but I depend on it just as much as anyone else.  Looking forward to being a blogger and wondering if I'll continue once this class is done.

- del