Day 2

The History of Computers and the internet

Today in our lecture we discussed how computers developed into what we know today. From the beginnings as number calculators through to what we know today. We discussed the influx of ideas on making the computer used in the business and military worlds to a personal computer that developed in the 70's.

How Apple developed an idea to make all computers essentially the same stock and you know what you are getting, where as IBM and Microsoft tried to develop a more individual computer so each person can have what they need and miss out on the things they don't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0tLubCFdyM&feature=related

We also discussed history of the internet, the web and cyberspace and the differences in their meanings and what people perceive them to be.

Internet being the sum of interconnected computer hardware and the software that runs it. However, the web is a particular application of the internet that is particularly easy to use, in order to access information. Cyberspace, is the sum of the users imaginations as they use the internet.

The internet was in development way back in the 1960's and really came into being thanks to the military. In the way that the military does, it put money into the research and development and probably in a way fast tracked by this. As many other technologies are helped along by the money feed to the research by the military. Who knows how long the internet may have been delayed, if the research hadn't had the funding when it did.

HTML is the language that wed pages are written, and it allows the page to be seen in the way that it is set up. this is why there are so many different views for web pages. Essentially a web page is just a collection of files (html documents, images, sounds, animations, etc) that exist on a computer somewhere.

With out HTML we wouldn't be able to see the web pages as we do. Its would just be in a text format, which would basically just be like reading a standard word document. The web wouldn't be as interesting and interactive as it is and probably would not be as easily accessible to the average person. Which makes you wonder if HTML had not been created the way it has would as many people be using the web.

These developments have allowed us as consumers to do some amazing things, with the ability to find out information about any subject we choose, in a matter of minutes, and we can contact and share photos and videos with people all over the world.