LECTURE TWO

Today we were given a timeline of computer history from Charles Babbage's Difference Machine in the 1800's to the thriving and competitive computer business of today.

Alan Turning devised the first working computer called The Bombe during WWII which was used to deciper German 'Enigma' codes. IBM produced the first commerical computers in the 1950's for government, military and coporate use.

In the 1970's ZeroxParc developed the mouse, the graphical user interface (GUI) and pull-down menus that made the personal computers of today possible and approachable by the general user. In 1975 the first personal computer (PC) was released called 0 and Bill Gates began writing a computer language called BASIC for Altair.

The Apple II was released in 1978 - the first computer that was packaged as a real consumer product.

In 1980 IBM teamed up with Microsoft and they bought an Operating System from Tim Patterson named Kudo and redeveloped into PC DOS 1.0. Then eventually came Windows and the rest is history.

Today we also watched a lovely little short film which was supposed to explain the 'ins and outs' of the internet and how it works. I was quite excited as the film was beginning and was already imagining how impressive I would sound over the dinner table tonight when I explained to everybody in great detail the inner workings of the World Wide Web and the internet (note I didn't use a captial - something I learnt in today's lecture).

But alas; I think I've ended up leaving more confused then ever and in summing up I'll use the words of Gibson....

"inthinkable complexity".

However, I did learn some important things for example; the internet and the World Wide Web are two different things and the internet isn't just one network but many networks.

One part of the lecture I particually enjoyed was the reference to ice-cream. I believe the parallels were drawn between ice-cream and the internet because neither of them were a proper noun. Unfortunately I missed the next part of the lecture because I was day dreaming of a waffle cone overflowing with mango sorbet and ferrero rochere from the gellato store in Surfers. Perhaps Adam should reconsider using such comparisons - especially so close to lunch!