Lecture Review Week 2

This lecture is aimed at understanding a short history of the computer and the internet. We can thank Charles Babbage for the birth of the computer. Born in 1791 Babbage was a son to an English banker. Following the completion of his MA at Cambridge in 1817, Babbage soon became the inventor of the first digital computer. The computer was actually Mechanical instead of being an electrical device. A woman then added to Babbage's' works. Her name was Ada Byron, she was the daughter of a famous poet called Lord Byron. Byron then went on to create the first computer program. The development of the computer was then continued by a man called Alan Turing. Joined with teams of people Turing devised the work working computer. Moving into the 1950's computers began to be commercially sold.

As computers slowly upgraded a company called Xerox PARC created the mouse. Following this the first personal computer was released in 1975. Bill Gates then begin in the business by starting his own in his garage called Microsoft. IBM realised that they were falling behind. In 1980 they decided to get into the PC business.

'The internet is a network of networks' which contain servers, mainframes and personal computers. The internet can be connected by; the telephone system, broad-band cable and satellite. The idea of the internet began in the 1960's by the RAND corporation. Other researchers were thinking of a similar idea they called the 'Packet Switching'. The two groups then came together and began working on a networking program.

Continuing on into the 1990's where there was the birth of the Worldwide Web. The Web brings together both internetworking and hypertext to make an easy to use global system. Browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape made these easier to access. The Web is different from the internet.

Cyberspace is a whole other thing. Cyberspace is the interconnection of reality and imagination. A man called Karl Popper began to write about the nature of reality and how it is divided into three worlds. The first world is the objective material world of natural things and their physical properties. The second world is subjective consciousness: intentions, calculations, feelings, thoughts, dreams, memories, etc in individual minds. The last world, world three is the public structures produced by living minds interacting with each other and the real world.