History of Computing Chapter 1

Introduction to Social and Ethical Computing

Historical Development of Computing

Development of the Internet

Development of the World Wide Web

The Emergence of Social and Ethical Problems in Computing

The Case for Computer Ethics Education

Historical Development Before 1900AD

Man sought to improved life through the invention of gargets. First utility tools recorded dealt with numbers First recorded on bones – 20,000 to 30,000 B.C. First place-value number system in place – 1800 B.C. Abacus – Mother of Computers – 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C. Zero and Negative Numbers – 300 B.C. and 500 A.D.

1500AD and 1900AD lot of activities in the development of computing devices Driven by commerce 1500 Leonardo da Vinci invented mechanical calculator 1621 invention of the slide rule 1625 Wilhelm Schichard’s mechanical calculator in 1640 Blaise Pascal’s Arithmetic Machine

Major breakthrough in speed up 1800 AD with the invention of the punched card by Joseph-Marie

Jacquard Revolutionized computing Quickly spread in other fields Speed up computation and storage of information

Historical Development Before 1900AD

1830 AD exciting period

1830 - Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine

George and Edward Schutz’s Difference Engine

Within a decade - major milestone

George Boole’s invention of Boolean Algebra

Opened fields of mathematics, engineering, & computing

Lead to the new frontiers in logic

Historical Development Before 1900AD Mid 1850 through the turn of the century

1857 - Sir Charles Wheatstone’s invention Paper tape to store information

Created new excitement in the computing community of the time.

Huge amounts of data could be entered & stored

1869AD - Logic Machine by William Stanley Jovons ~1874 - first Keyboard by Sholes 1881 - Rectangular Logic Diagrams by Allan Marquand

Historical Development Before 1900AD

Mid 1850 through the turn of the century

1886, Charles Pierce - first linked Boolean Algebra to circuits based on switches

Major break through in mathematics, engineering and computing science

1890 - John Venn invented the Venn diagrams

Used extensively in switching algebras in both hardware and software development

1890 - Herman Hollerith invented the Tabulating Machine

Utilized Jacquard’s punched card to read the presence or absence of holes.

The data read was to be collated using an automatic electrical tabulating machine

Large number of clock-like counters Summed up and accumulated the results in a number

of selected categories.

After 1900 AD Computing in infancy Century began with a major milestone

Vacuum tube by John Ambrose Fleming. Played a major role in computing for the next half

century. All digital computer in the first half century ran on

vacuum tubes. 1906 - triode by Lee de Forest in 1906. 1926 - first semiconductor transistor

Not used for several years Came to dominate the computing industry in late

years

1937 - Turing Machine by Alan Turing

Invention of an abstract computer Some problems do not lend themselves to algorithmic

representations, not computable 1942 - COLOSSUS, one of the first working programmable

digital computers

After 1900 AD

1942 – Turing designed COLOSSUS

One of the first working programmable digital computers

1939 – Vincent Atanasoff – 1st digital computer model

utilized capacitors to store electronic charge to represent Boolean numbers

0 and 1 used by the machine in calculations

Input and output data was on punched cards

Some doubt it ever worked

After 1900 AD

Howard Aiken – developed Harvard Mark I

1st large scale automatic digital computer.

also known as IBM automatic sequencer calculator- ASCC

1943, Alan Turing – COLOSSUS

Considered 1st programmable compute

designed to break the German ENIGMA code

used about 1800 vacuum tubes

execute a variety of routines.

After 1900

John William Mauchly & J. Presper Eckert Jr - ENICAC

Vacuum tube-based general purpose

10 feet high

Weighed 30 tons

Occupied 1000 square feet

70,000 resistors

10,000 capacitors

6000 switches

18,000 vacuum tube

No internal memory

Hard-wired

Consistently programmed by switches and diodes

After 1900 1944-1952 John William Mauchly & J. Presper

Eckert Jr – EDVAC

Electronic discrete variable automatic computer

1st truly general purpose digital computer

Stored program instruction concept

completed in 1956

4,000 vacuum tubes and 10,000 crystal diodes

1948 - UNIVAC I

1st commercially available computer.

After 1900

Many companies became involved International Business Machines (IBM), Honeywell,

and Control Data Corporation (CDC) in the USA, and International Computers Limited, (ICL) in UK

Built mainframe Hugh – took entire rooms Expensive – use limited to big corporations

Mid to late sixties Developed less expensive but smaller computer Minicomputer Timesharing concept Let to idea of networking

After 1900

1971 and 1976 - first microprocessor Built with integrated circuit with many

transistors on a single board Vacuum tubes and diodes no longer used Ted Hoff The 4004 4-bit data path

1972 – Intel - 8008 8-bit microprocessor based on the 4004 fIrst microprocessor to use a compiler Specific application microprocessors

Microprocessor

1974 -truly general purpose microprocessor 8080 -8-bit device - 4,500

transistors & astonishing 200,000 operations per second

After 1974, development exploded

Computer Software and Personal Computer (PC)

Until mid 1970s Development led by hardware Computers were designed and software was

designed to fit the hardware.

Personal computing industry began 1976 - Apple I and Apple II microcomputer

were unveiled 1981 - IBM joined the PC wars

3 Major Players IBM Gary Kildall - Developed the first PC

operating system Bill Gates - Developed the Disk Operating

System (DOS).

The Development of the Internet

Internet based on 4 technologies Telegraph Telephone Radio Computers

Originated from the early work of J.C.R. Licklider Conceptualized a global interconnected set of computers Concept for communication between network nodes

Packets instead of circuits

Enabled computers to talk to each other.

1961 - Kleinrock Published first work on packet switching theory

The Development of the Internet

Two additional important projects Donald Davies and Roger Scantleberg

Coining the term packet Connected computer in Boston with

one in Los Angels Low speed dial-up telephone line created the first working Wide Area

Network 1967 Roberts - publishing the first

plan for ARPNET 1968 - team, lead by Frank Heart and

included Bob Kahn, developed IMP

ARPNET

Began as tool for defense contractors

Universities added

Government joined

Other countries joined

ARPANET ceased to exist in 1989

Internet was an entity to itself

Development World Wide Web

Beginning concepts - Tim Berners-Lee’s 1989 Proposal called HyperText and CERN Enable collaboration between physicists &

researchers in the high energy physics research

Three new technologies were incorporated. HyperText Markup Language (HTML)

hypertext concepts- to be used to write web documents

HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) a protocol Used to transmit web pages between hosts Web browser client software program to

receive and interpret data and display results.

Development World Wide Web

Proposal included a very important concept for the user interface Consistent across all types of computer

platforms Enable users to access information from

any computer. Line-mode interface was developed &

named at CERN in late 1989

Development World Wide Web

Growth

Central computer at CERN with few web pages in 1991

50 world wide by 1992

720,000 by 1999

Over 24 million by 2001

1993 - graphic user interface browser

Mosaic

Popularized and fueled growth of internet

Emergence of the Social & Ethical Problems in Computing

The Emergence of Computer Crimes Perhaps started with the invention of the computer

virus The term virus is derived from a Latin word virus

which means poison Computer virus

Self-propagating computer program

Designed to alter or destroy a computer system resource

Spreads in the new environment Attacks major system Weakens the capacity of resources to perform

1972 – virus used to describe piece of unwanted computer code

Growth of Computer Vulnerabilities

The Case for Computer Ethics Education What is Computer Ethics

James H. Moore First coined the phrase "computer ethics“

Computer ethics is the analysis of the nature and social impact of computer technology and the corresponding formulation and justification of policies for the ethical use of such technology .

Definition focuses on the human actions Study, an analysis of the values of human actions

influenced by computer technology. Computer influence on human actions is widespread

throughout the decision making process preceding the action

Education we study the factors that influence the decision making process

Why You Should Study Computer Ethics

Central task of computer ethics determine what should be done Especially whenever there is a policy vacuum

Vacuums caused by the ‘confusion’ between the known policies and what is presented

Professionals unprepared to deal effectively with the ethical issues

Can stop the vacuums Can prepare the professionals

Schools of Thought

Study computer ethics as remedial moral education

Computer ethics education not as a moral education but as a field worthy of study in its own right

Justification for First Thought

We should study computer ethics because doing so will make us behave like responsible professionals.

We should study computer ethics because doing so will teach us how to avoid computer abuse and catastrophes.

Material taken from Walter Manner in “Is Computer Ethics Unique?”

Justification for Second Thought

We should study computer ethics because the advance of computing technology will continue to create temporary policy vacuums.

We should study computer ethics because the use of computing permanently transforms certain ethical issues to the degree that their alterations require independent study.

We should study computer ethics because the use of computing technology creates, and will continue to create, novel ethical issues that require special study.

We should study computer ethics because the set of novel and transformed issues is large enough and coherent enough to define a new field

Material taken from Walter Manner in “Is Computer Ethics Unique?”