Lecture Summary - Day 2

Today we covered the history of computing and the internet.

The question of what a computer is and what it means was brought up and explained in terms of "mathematical calculations". A computer originally meant people computing, where they were performing mathematical functions. Computer use to mean calculate, it was calculating and performing mathematics.

Computers were first commercially produced by IBM in the 1950's. They were large, expensive machines purely used by the military, government and corporate work. By 1965 the computers became less expansive and a lot smaller.

A topic we covered that was particularly interesting was on the term hacker. A hacker use to be an expert on computers that knew how to put everything together and get things to run as they should. Nowadays a hacker is sadly now more associated with criminal activity on computers.

An interesting court case that has arisen in the history of computer software was a case where Windows sued apple claiming they had stolen their idea of icons on a desktop with a cursor controlled by a mouse.

History of the Internet

The internet is 40 years old, and came about before personal computers. One very important rule to remember about the internet is the internet is very different to the World Wide Web. This can be better explained in the terms that the internet is the whole spectrum and the web is one area of it. The internet includes file sharing, msn and applications and the web is a separate part altogether.

Email was first developed in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, he also invented the @ symbol. Emoticons which have been widely used and still used today followed shortly after in 1979.