Week 1 Discussion 2

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&cont… 1/52

Introduction In the first chapter, you learned about the penetration of computers into society and the importance of digital literacy. The goal was to help you realize the social significance of the computer and understand its importance in our lives today. In this chapter, you will take the next step. Instead of observing computers from the outside, we will explore them from the inside to see what they are made of and to understand how they have evolved over the last century. We begin the chapter by discussing early computers, which were so large they were weighed by the ton, and we end the chapter by examining some of today's computers, which are so thin they can be easily carried in a pocket or a purse. Indeed, it has been a hardware revolution.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&cont… 2/52

Charles Babbage developed plans for an "Analytical Engine" in the mid- nineteenth century. Though he never completed the engine, he is

2.1 A Brief History of Computing Although many people think the computer is a very recent development, it actually has a long history that demonstrates how quickly the computer industry changes. History provides a context for how far we have come with computers in a relatively short period of time. Most importantly, by understanding computer history we can gain a better and deeper understanding of today's computing environment. Since you are reading these words on a computer right now, take a moment and look around you. If your computer is a desktop, the items you see— your mouse, keyboard, monitor, and even the icons on your screen—all have a history. If you are reading this on a tablet computer or an e-reader, it, too has a history, though with a much shorter timeline. This history shapes our lives and influences the way we interact with the world.

In the Beginning. . .

The concept of a calculating machine with gears first took physical shape during the 17th century. The use of mechanical devices as an aid in the calculation of numbers was an elusive and attractive dream for Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician (Coleman, 1986, p. 32).

One of those who Pascal inspired was Charles Babbage. In 1812, at Cambridge University in England, Babbage worked with his friend, Ada Byron Lovelace, who also had high expectations for the future of a computing machine (Stein, 1985, p. xi). While they never attained these lofty ideals, what Babbage did accomplish was to develop designs for all the components of a programmable computer. Babbage and Lovelace defined the central functions of a computer and called them input, output, memory, logic, and processor. These are terms we still use today. Together, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace can be considered the "Father and Mother of the Computer."

The Origin of the Computer

The Origin of the Computer From Title:

The History of Computers (https://fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx? wID=100753&xtid=29445)

© Infobase. All Rights Reserved. Length: 03:21   

 0:000:00 / 3:21 / 3:21 1x1x

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&cont… 3/52

considered the father of the computer for being the first to conceive of and diagram an automatic calculating machine.

The IBM® Era

By the late 19th century, the enthusiasm for computers moved to the United States (Bowles, 1996). Herman Hollerith had great success with his construction of a machine to tabulate the 1890 census. He came up with the idea of representing each person's data on a punch card with holes in it. In 1924, Hollerith's company changed its name to International Business Machines, which is known today as IBM®.

The von Neumann Architecture

The next important computer was the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), completed in 1949, and operational in 1951. It was significant because of John von Neumann's work on the logical operations of the machine (Macrae, 2000). These five "classic components" of a computer—memory, input, output, arithmetic logic unit, and control unit—are known as the von Neumann architecture and remain the basic structure for computers to this day. The EDVAC was also called the stored-program computer because it stored data internally on its memory. In addition to storing information, the memory could hold codes for operating the machine, also known as a stored program.

In von Neumann's system, the computer had its own arithmetic calculator that could perform basic math. This arithmetic logic unit used only binary numbers. Binary means that the computer represents all information, including images and text, as combinations of ones and zeros. To understand what this means, think of a light bulb. When the light was on, the computer considered this to be the number 1. When the light was off, the computer considered this to be a 0. Every number and letter on the computer can be signified by a series of ones and zeros. Von Neumann referred to data coming into the computer as the input and data leaving the machine as its output. It traveled through a data path (later called a bus) from its memory, performed the operation in the arithmetic component, and then either stored the result for further computations or output the data (Davis, 2000, p. 182).

The IBM® 360

At this point, IBM® staked the future of the company on the development of a new computer called the IBM® 360, first released in April 1964. The name 360 indicated that this computer targeted a "full circle" of customers to perform functions ranging from complex mathematics at scientific laboratories, to simpler and more repetitive calculations done in business. (You may also recognize the importance of this number today from the Xbox® 360, a game console system from Microsoft®, or Norton™ 360, a virus protection suite of software.)

The IBM® 360 also came with a host of peripherals (external devices that can be connected to a computer to enhance its capability, such as printers or storage devices). More than 150 peripherals were offered the first day the IBM® 360 went to market, including disks, tapes, and punch cards designed to make the entire system more efficient and user-friendly. It also had an operating system known as OS/360 and used transistors, a Bell Labs innovation that quickly became the heart of the computing industry, to eliminate the need for vacuum tubes and enable computers to be smaller, faster, and more reliable. Transistors are small switches that can amplify a data signal to a computer, as shown in Figure 2.1. Some have called the transistor the most significant invention of the 20th century (Bunch & Hellemans, 2004, p. 546).

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&cont… 4/52

This graph demonstrates the incredible increase in the number of transistors in processors over time. As the data shows, the number of transistors doubles every two years.

Figure 2.1: Increase of transistor count over time

Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transistor_Count_and_Moore %27s_Law_-_2011.svg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transistor_Count_and_Moore%27s_Law_-_2011.svg)

With the IBM® 360, the company gained an astonishing 70% of the market share (Ceruzzi, 2003, p. 145). By the mid-1970s, the computer industry had come of age. Information technology had taken its place as one of the most significant industries in the world, and it was beginning to rival the automobile industry in size. By 1975, of every $120 spent on goods in the United States, $1 went for the purchase of a computer (Campbell-Kelly & Aspray, 1996, p. 150).

As so often happens in the computer industry, change was coming. The personal computer was on the horizon, and a revolution was around the corner.

Innovation at Xerox®

While today we think of Xerox® as a copier manufacturing company, it was the center of the universe as far as computer innovation during the 1970s (Hiltzik, 2007). At this time, there was a growing concern that businesses might become "paperless" because all data would be stored on computers. This was a concern to Xerox® executives because their income was based on businesses photocopying physical documents. Therefore, they began to explore how Xerox® might be able to survive in a digital era. Located near Stanford University in California, these bright engineers at Xerox® PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) prepared for a paperless

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&cont… 5/52

doomsday that they believed would occur in 1990 (although it did not happen, we are still moving in this direction). Fear spurred them to create peripheral devices that changed the shape of computing, including the cursor, mouse, pointer, Graphical User Interface (GUI), WYSIWYG, laser printers, and word processors. Although we will be discussing what some of these terms mean later, it is important to remember that while the initial innovations occurred at Xerox®, it was other companies that brought these devices to market. This is a valuable lesson; innovation does not guarantee commercial success.

What happened to all of this peripheral innovation? The Xerox® executives were interested in what these engineers accomplished, but they never gave the go-ahead to fund the devices beyond the research stage. They did, however, invite guests to tour their facilities. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple®, visited Xerox® in 1979 and gathered ideas that became the central features of the Macintosh®, which he released in 1984. Bill Gates would later incorporate these same design elements into Microsoft® Windows® (Cringely, 1991, pp. 73–92). The personal computer was on the horizon.

Inventing the Processor

The development of the processor enabled the computer to become personal. Ted Hoff, working at a widely unknown company called Intel® during the 1960s, came up with an interesting idea to solve a problem for a customer. Hoff's idea was to develop a general-purpose integrated circuit, instead of a specific logic chip that would work only in this calculator. In other words, multiple electronic circuits were placed on one chip.

What is an integrated circuit? Often, you will find that it is difficult to understand the definitions of technical terms because the explanations can be as complex (or more so) than the original terms themselves. An integrated circuit is an example. Basically, it is a small silicon wafer in which circuits consisting of millions of transistors, resistors, and capacitors can be embedded. The transistor is a switch that can amplify current (think of a radio amplifier in your car stereo) or turn electricity on or off. A resistor can control the current and limit it (think of a volume control on a TV). A capacitor can collect and hold energy for a short burst (just like the flash on a camera).

Hoff's integrated circuit was a revolutionary development because it was more than just a chip for a calculator. Instead, it could be used in a variety of devices ranging from music synthesizers to missile guidance systems. To make these machines perform different functions, each chip needed only a different set of instructions, or a program. This was revolutionary because now one piece of hardware (the processor) could be used in any type of computer as long as the software changed. It was much easier to change a software program than to redesign a processor. Hoff was elated with his development, but no one else seemed to care or realize its significance. Hoff was able to convince Intel® to develop his project, and by 1970, they had a prototype called the "processor" (Palfreman & Swade, 1991, pp. 106–118).

One of the main benefits of the processor was its small size. Remember, the mainframe computers of the 1950s weighed several tons and filled an entire room. The silicon processor, developed in a California region soon to be called Silicon Valley, could be held in the palm of your hand. Smaller, faster, and cheaper, the processor seemed to have unlimited potential. But Intel® remained ahead of the curve. IBM® and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) evaluated the idea and concluded that there would be no market for such a device. After all, what possible reason would an average person have for a computer, especially at home? IBM® thought that if someone really wanted to use a computer, he or she could rent time-sharing from a local business mainframe during off hours (Campbell-Kelly & Aspray, 1996, pp. 236–258).

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&cont… 6/52

Altair, the First PC

The large computer makers failed to realize there was a home market for computers. Instead, those who were most excited about the development of the processor were the hobbyists. They wanted a computer in their home and were willing and knowledgeable enough to build it themselves. They were finally able to do this in January 1975, when Popular Electronics hit the newsstands with a cover depicting a computer called the Altair that could be purchased in pieces and assembled at home. By 1976, 5,000 to 15,000 Americans had an Altair (Berger, 1976, p. 112). At one large meeting for the Altair in Atlantic City, two men named Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs began selling circuit boards.

Apple®

Jobs and Wozniak were an interesting, idealistic pair who had been tinkering with a computer in Jobs's garage. In 1976, they released their computer, called the Apple® I, which soon evolved into the more popular Apple® II. This was a personal computer designed for everyone to use out-of-the box, not just the skilled hobbyist geeks who assembled it with their own soldering guns. The Apple® II met with a resounding success upon its release in March 1977. The company had $700,000 in sales the first year, and $7 million the next. Suddenly, a personal computer industry began to flourish, and along with Apple®, other computers hit the market, including the RadioShack TRS-80, the Commodore PET, and later, the Atari™ 400/800 computers.

These new computers came with a monitor (or could be plugged into a television) and a keyboard, but the biggest frustration for users was how data and other programs were stored. The device used to store a program or load one into the computer was a simple audiotape cassette deck that plugged into the computer through a special port. The sound carried the data, but it was a slow and often inexact process to enter or save data. Sometimes, the entire tape played in, only to display a data entry error at the end, requiring the entire process to be repeated:

Rewind. Advance the leader of the cassette tape. And try again.

Rewind. Advance the leader of the cassette tape. And try again.

Wozniak eventually came to the rescue by developing a disk drive that stored data on 5.25-inch floppy disks. This was a faster and much more reliable method of transmitting and storing data to and from the computer. By 1980, Apple®'s sales were $96 million. But where was IBM®? This question was on the minds of many. When would this sleeping giant awake? And, when it did, how would its entry change the face of the computer industry that was firmly under Apple®'s control?

IBM® Gets Personal

Some have considered IBM®'s entry into the market as the most important development in the history of personal computers. While the homebrew clubs (these were clubs of computer hobbyists) and the early Apple® advocates would take exception to this statement, the IBM® PC was a significant moment in the history of computing. The original release took place in August 1981, and for $1,565, the first IBM® PC came with several nice features, including 64 KB of RAM memory and an external hard drive that could store 160 KB of data on a single-sided disk. The monitor—which had a green-and-white monochrome display—cost extra. The result was a huge

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&cont… 7/52

The invention of the floppy disk in the late 1970s made personal computers more convenient to use, and therefore, more popular. What methods of data storage have replaced the floppy disk today?

Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Thinkstock/©Getty Images

commercial success. IBM® had hoped to sell 240,000 computers over a period of five years. Instead, they received that many orders in the first month alone. The first IBM® PC was not revolutionary in itself because Apple® and Altair had been there first, but what made it so important was that it came from IBM®. In a sense, what IBM® did was legitimize the personal computer and demonstrate that a personal PC had a role to play in a company long known for developing massive mainframes (New York Times, 2007, p. 449).

The IBM® PC

How did the IBM® PC come to be? The company had considered manufacturing the PC for years, but nothing transpired until July 1980, when John R. Opel and Frank T. Carey, the IBM® president and chairman, respectively, asked their managers for a report on how the company could enter the personal computer market within a year (Campbell-Kelly & Aspray, 1996, p. 232). Just one month later, a plan was in place, and IBM® began working on the PC. Launching the first PC within a year was an ambitious plan for a large, slow-moving company that typically took up to four years to develop a new computer. One way it accomplished this ambitious goal was to delegate the development of some parts of the computer to third-party vendors. One of these requirements was a software system, and instead of developing one internally, IBM® found a vendor that impressed them: Microsoft® (Wise, 1982, p. 23). For the central processor, IBM® selected the Intel® 8088 and 8086 chips. Although this strategy enabled IBM® to put the PC on the market in record time, partnering so closely with its vendors meant that IBM® lost a significant portion of its profit margin. The company achieved short-term success, but jeopardized its long-term strength.

Another Apple®—Macintosh®

Apple® Computer, still headed by Jobs and Wozniak, continued to push its brand of computer while IBM® worked on entering the market. However, Apple® began to encounter less consumer enthusiasm for its newer products. The first was the Apple® III, released in 1980. The main reason people did not rush out to purchase an Apple® III was its retail price, which ranged from $4,000 to nearly $8,000. These numbers have not been adjusted for inflation. Computers sold in 1980 cost a great deal more and were significantly less powerful than computers today. The high price compensated for the low demand and kept Apple® alive as it continued to push the limits of computer technology by offering a product that was unique and innovative. Apple® maintained this philosophy with its next major computer release, the LISA (Largely Integrated Systems Architecture), in 1983. The most significant feature of this computer was that it was the first personal computer to have a GUI (Graphical User Interface). This meant that users could manipulate the computer by clicking on icons instead of typing characters on a screen. When users turned on an IBM® PC, they saw a black screen with three lonely characters, C:\ (called the C prompt), and a blinking cursor. When a LISA was turned on, its screen showed icons representing applications and tasks the computer could perform. The LISA incorporated a mouse to let users navigate the menus and icons quickly and easily.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&cont… 8/52

Despite the glamour of LISA, there were problems, including its price (initially $12,000), which was even more expensive than the Apple® III (Freiberger, 1983, p. 1). Apple® eventually lowered LISA's cost by $2,000, but sales were still slow. The company learned its lesson, but did not want to give up on the LISA features. In 1984, Apple® launched a new computer called the Macintosh® that maintained the GUI interface and mouse. This release, which included a remarkably futuristic Super Bowl commercial, established the major divisions in the personal computer wars. On one side was the IBM® PC; on the other was the Apple® Macintosh®. This division continues to this day, even though IBM® itself is no longer a major player.

Early sales of the Macintosh® were slow. Although it was the fastest-selling $10,000 computer of all time, only 25,000 people bought it the year it was introduced (Mace, 1983, p. 65). It had no hard drive and had only limited memory, which made the computer operate slowly. IBM® remained the safer choice in the personal computer and small business environment (Wise & Steemers, 2000, pp. 49–50), while Apple® maintained and cultivated a small and loyal following.

One of the remarkable features of computers is that they decrease in price over time, while also getting more powerful. Table 2.1 shows the decrease in price, and increase in speed and capability.

Table 2.1: Macintosh® and iMac® comparison from 1984 and 2009

Computer Macintosh® iMac®

Year sold 1984 2009

Price in 2009 dollars $5,186.17 $3,849.00

CPU Motorola 68000 2.8 GHz quad-core Intel® Core™ i7

Total CPU MHz 7.83 11,200

RAM (KB) 128 16,000,000

Fixed Disk (MB) 0 2,000,000

Removable Drive 3.5" floppy 8x double-layer SuperDrive

Removable Capacity (KB/media)

400 8,500,000

Operating System Apple® Macintosh® System Software 1.0

Apple® Mac® OS X® 10.6 Snow Leopard

Adapted from http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/04/computers-just-keep-getting-cheaper-and-better-and-we-should-eagerly- await-the-days-ahead/

Enter the Clones

IBM® continued its domination of the market by introducing three new personal computers during the 1980s: the 80286 (in 1982), the 80386 (in 1985), and the 80486 (in 1989). These were the names that computer users called them, but in reality they were the names of the Intel® processor inside the machine. Higher numbers indicated a faster machine with more computing power, which was needed as applications became more graphically intensive and required greater amounts of memory. But IBM® was not the only company selling machines. A variety of

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&cont… 9/52

clones hit the market almost as soon as the original IBM® PC did. This became a highly competitive field very quickly. Other companies duplicated the IBM® product and marketed their computers as being "100% compatible with IBM®." A host of IBM® compatibles flooded the market, and some of these companies have survived to this day, including Gateway® and Dell™ Computers (Compaq merged into Hewlett-Packard). Today, there are even more companies manufacturing desktop and portable computers and it remains a very competitive market.

Open the Windows

By 1991, the PC entered a new phase. Using Microsoft®'s new graphical operating system called 3.1 (to be covered in a later chapter), the PC was now "borrowing" the appearance and features of the Macintosh®. But ultimately, it was not IBM® that saw the lion's share of the profits. Companies that sold clones, such as Dell™ and Compaq, made more money than IBM® did. Microsoft® was the biggest winner during this period because it was able to sell its software for both the clones and IBM® (Ceruzzi, 2003, p. 272). Thus, much of the personal computer environment was established with the IBM® PC and clones on one side, the Apple® Macintosh® on the other, and Microsoft® in the enviable software position in the middle.

Questions to Consider

1. Are computers a recent development? 2. Who are considered "the Father and Mother of the Computer"? 3. What are the five main components of the von Neumann computer architecture? 4. What was the first computer to use a binary operating system? 5. What did the number "360" represent in the name of the IBM® 360 computer? 6. Who invented the processor, and what company did he work for? 7. What was the name of the first personal computer? 8. Who founded Apple®, and when did the company release its first computer? 9. What were some of Apple®'s early competitors?

10. When did IBM® first sell its PC? Who were some of the key vendors that created parts for the PC?

11. What does GUI stand for, and what were the first personal computers to use GUI? 12. Which was a faster processor: the 80286 or the 80386? 13. What were two of the companies that manufactured IBM® clones?

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 10/52

2.2 Looking Inside the Computer One of the ironies in writing a book about digital literacy for online students is that you clearly have some level of familiarity with the computer; otherwise, you would not be reading these electronic words. You know how to turn on a computer, identify a monitor, and how to use a keyboard and mouse to perform tasks online. With this in mind, let's skip over some of the most basic information and branch off into a discussion of how a computer works. The focus here will be on a standard desktop computer. Everything discussed also applies to a tablet, although the components are smaller and condensed into a single portable case. Both tablets and desktops work the same way though interaction with a tablet is with touch and with a desktop computer it is with a mouse (Miller, 2007). However, now with the new Windows® 8 operating system, Microsoft® is integrating touch into the desktop environment.

The Main Computer Box

Let's start with the large box to which the monitor, keyboard, printer, speakers, and mouse are connected. This is the computer itself. It can come in different shapes and sizes, including large (tower) and smaller (mini tower) options. In the early days, these boxes were either white or beige, but now they can be any color, although many are black. On the front is the on/off button, a blinking light that indicates when the hard drive is in operation, and options for external storage such as a DVD drive (more on this topic later). The back of the computer (or the front on many tower computer cases) is where you will find ports to connect other devices, such as stereo mini jacks for speakers or microphones, Ethernet for your Internet connection, and USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports for peripherals such as cameras or printers (again, more information on these topics will be provided later). The major components of a computer are shown in Figure 2.2. All the computer magic happens inside the box, but our goal in the next few paragraphs will be to dispel the notion that magic is involved. Instead, computers work by means of a relatively simple and direct process (Parsons & Oja, 2010).

Figure 2.2: Computer parts

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 11/52

This interactive figure reviews the major parts of a computer, including typical peripheral devices such as a printer and scanner.

Before you pull off your computer case, be sure to take the following precautions. First, unplug the power and press and hold the start button for 10 seconds. This drains power from the capacitors (a device similar to a battery in that it stores electrical energy). Second, eliminate any static electricity in your body that might have built up. We have all experienced what happens when we shuffle our feet on carpet when wearing socks and then touch someone. A small spark of static electricity is produced. This electrical charge is not strong enough to hurt you or anyone else, but it is powerful enough to destroy your computer. To eliminate any traces of static electricity, you can buy an antistatic wristband or an antistatic mat. The other way to do this is to touch the bare metal of the computer case the entire time you are working on anything inside.

After taking these safety precautions, when you open the computer you will find numerous colored wires, computer chips, and circuit boards. The most important of these is the largest one, which is usually located at the base of the computer. This is known as the motherboard, because it is the board that all the other circuit boards plug into and also because this is where the computer memory and processor reside. The nice thing about the motherboard is that you can add things to it in its open expansion slots, which allow you to customize your

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 12/52

computer. If you are interested in playing Second Life or World of Warcraft, it would be a very good idea to add a more advanced video card (such as those manufactured by Nvidia, ATI, PNY, GeForce, or Radeon). This will make the graphical processing faster with more video memory, enable more detailed screen resolution, and also allow you to connect two or more monitors to the same computer.

Processor

What is the processor? This is the brain of the computer, and it is located on the motherboard. The processor is also sometimes called the central processing unit or the CPU. The CPU is like an orchestra conductor; it tells all the other parts how to act and when. A stored program in the CPU called the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is the code that the processor follows when the computer is first turned on or booted. The BIOS helps initialize all the peripherals so the CPU can send data to and from them as needed. As you will see in the following sections, companies like Intel® have developed many different types of CPUs. CPUs are usually identified by a name or a number. For example, the earliest ones by Intel® were called the 8086 and 8088 during the 1970s. The 1980s brought the 80286, 80386, and 80486. Then, in the 1990s, the next generation was the Intel® Pentium® chips. Today, you might find options such as the Intel ®Celeron®, Intel ® Centrino®, or Intel® Core™ i5 or i7 processor when purchasing a new computer. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) also has a long history of developing processors since the 1970s.

What makes one processor better than another? One key factor is speed. The CPU's speed is not measured in miles per hour (mph) like the speed of a car. Instead, CPU speed is measured in gigahertz (GHz). If you see a CPU stating that it runs at 1 GHz, this means it operates at one billion cycles per second. The higher the number of GHz, the faster the processor. Older computers were much slower than this. For example, in the late 1980s, you would have been thrilled to own a computer that operated at 33 megahertz (MHz), or 33 million cycles per second. It is important to note that a computer cannot always execute an entire instruction in one cycle. The cycle is simply a measure of the smallest unit of time that exists for the processor. While some computer instructions can take place within the span of one cycle, others require many cycles. Another way to measure a processor is by the number of transistors it contains. Table 2.2 shows how far these processors have advanced over the past three decades.

Table 2.2: The evolution of the processor

Year Processor Transistor Speed

1978 8086 29,000 10 MHz

1989 80486 1.2 million 25 MHz

1999 Pentium® II 9.5 million 600 MHz

2006 Core™ 2 Extreme 585 million 3 GHz

2012 Intel® Core™ i7-3770K 1.4 billion 3.5–3.9 GHz

Source: Compiled from http://download.intel.com/pressroom/kits/IntelProcessorHistory.pdf (http://download.intel.com/pressroom/kits/IntelProcessorHistory.pdf)

In 2008, the processor entered the multi-core era with a single processor actually containing multiple processor cores, allowing it to perform several different tasks at the same time.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 13/52

A Look Further: Processor Names and Speeds

Processor names and speeds are changing all the time. One way to keep up with this is a website called CPU Benchmarks, which has now rated over 600,000 CPUs: http://cpubenchmark.net/ (http://cpubenchmark.net/) .

The Chips Are Everywhere

Computer chips are not just for computers anymore. Today, a majority of all household appliances have a computer chip in them. For example, your coffee maker likely has one. Even though it does not have a traditional input device like a QWERTY keyboard, you can still input your instructions into your coffee maker and tell it what you want it to do. You can program it to turn itself on 15 minutes before you wake up to have a hot pot ready. Or you can tell it to keep the pot warm for one hour or six. The computer chip receives these inputs from you and then controls various internal devices in order to follow your instructions. Advanced users can even connect that same coffee pot to the Internet and control it from anywhere in the world.

Chips can also be used for tracking. In other words, you can purchase a tracking chip, place it in your child's backpack, and in an emergency you can find out exactly where the backpack is located through satellite data. All cell phones and smartphones have this information, and while this is proprietary information controlled by wireless companies, like Verizon, there is a growing push to make the information available to law enforcement agencies to help find missing persons. Known as the Kelsey Law, as of August 2012, eight states have enacted it. It is named for Kelsey Smith, a Kansas teenager who was abducted in June 2007. Four days later, police found her body. Had they been able to gain tracking location from her cell phone, it is possible she would be alive today. Her parents have spearheaded the effort to make this a law in all states. We will see the use of tracking chips expand in the future. Some passports already have them embedded.

If you started taking apart your household appliances and other electronic devices you use on a daily basis (this is not recommended!), you would find lots of other computer chips hiding inside. You might find them in clocks, watches, printers, digital scales, smartphones, tablet computers, automobiles, televisions, refrigerators, microwaves, garage door openers, TV remote controls, and so on. Of course, they are found not just in the home but also in nearly every work site. Hospitals have computer chips embedded in every medical device. Technicians and mechanics use them to test and calibrate the equipment they service. Even though a traditional computer with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor may not be everywhere, computer chips essentially surround us in our daily lives at work and at home, whether we know it or not.

Technology Today: The Internet of Things

GE is working with a company called Tendril that specializes in energy management services to develop a software program that will allow consumers to control all of their household appliances through Web browsers on PCs or even on cell phones when they are away from home (LaMonica, 2009).

Three things are making these developments possible:

1. The continuing increase in power—and simultaneous decrease in cost—of computer chips. 2. The emergence of the Internet as a global communications platform.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 14/52

3. The advent of Wi-Fi technology, which makes it easier to build home computing networks.

Computer chips are becoming so inexpensive to produce that some scientists expect soon to see smart chips that cost two dollars or less routinely placed in household appliances. If that happens, consumers will be able to connect all of their appliances to Wi-Fi networks in their homes, and then link those networks—via the Internet.

Futurists have been predicting this exact scenario for years. They even have a name for the multitude of home networks that will connect all these smart appliances. They call it The Internet of Things.

Links to Additional Information

The Internet of Things https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our- insights/the-internet-of-things (https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and- telecommunications/our-insights/the-internet-of-things)

Memory

An important part of the motherboard as well as the computer's overall effectiveness is its memory. Memory is a very important capability for humans. After all, this is where we store our knowledge, identity, and skills. The importance of memory for a computer is similarly significant. Random Access Memory (RAM) is the temporary memory that the CPU uses while performing calculations or running your programs. This means it is volatile, so if you lose power, all of the information stored in RAM will simply disappear. Another type of memory in your CPU is called Read Only Memory (ROM). These instructions are also called firmware because they are permanently encoded into ROM. The BIOS is an example of firmware.

Another type of memory is called the cache (pronounced "cash"). The computer uses this by putting data and programs into it that you frequently use so it can access them more quickly. One way you can test this is by turning on your computer and then opening Word. Time how long it takes for Word to open. Then exit and reopen the program and notice how much faster it has loaded. This is possible because the computer has "cached" much of the Word program to enable a faster response.

Storage

It is very important at this stage to differentiate between "memory" and "storage." Storage is for the permanent retention of data like your class papers, music, video, images, etc. This is typically kept on a "hard drive," or the long-term internal storage device, which is typically denoted by the letter "C" in a computer. These letters were first used as way to name storage devices. In the 1970s and 1980s, hard drives were rare and most personal computers had external storage drives. The first one plugged in received the name A (this was usually a 5.25" drive). Next, were the 3.5" external drives that had a slightly larger capacity, and were often identified with the letter "B." At that point, hard drives became more popular, so they were designated with the letter C. Even today, while you click on the "Computer" option in a Windows® operating system, you will see the operating system and the hard drive denoted with the letter C. The DVD drive then has the letter D, and any other external devices or drives are assigned successive letters.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 15/52

Keep in mind this important distinction between memory and storage. Again, memory is typically for the temporary storage of data that is used to perform current operations either from a program or a specific operation.

One example of storage is called flash, and it does not disappear when your computer loses power. USB jump drives are an example of this. Other examples include digital cameras and cell phones. When you lose the charge to these devices after the battery runs down, the photos or the phone numbers do not disappear. You can thank your flash memory for that.

Later in this book, we will be exploring a type of storage called cloud. This refers to personal data that you do not store in your home or on any of the devices you own. Instead, you store the data on computer servers hosted by companies throughout the world. You do not know where the data is, but you know how to access and modify it. The benefits are that the data is safe in case you have a fire in your home, you lose the device your data is stored on, or your computer malfunctions and crashes.

Binary Data

Now, let's discuss how the computer stores information. The computer operates on a binary system of ones and zeros. Everything you see or hear on a computer—words, images, data, pictures, movies, and music—is represented inside the computer as a one or a zero. Each one or zero is represented by a single bit (a binary digit) of memory. (The computer can tell the difference between a one and a zero by a high or a low voltage.)

How does a one or a zero represent data? Let's look at a simple example involving numbers. If you wanted to count to 10 in the decimal system, the sequence would be 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. In the binary system, this would be 0000, 0001, 0010, 0011, 0100, 0101, 0110, 0111, 1000, 1001, 1010.

Let's explore what these ones and zeros mean so that you can learn to count in binary. In binary, when the digit is a 0, it represents a zero (or the "off" position), and when it is a 1 (or the "on" position), it represents a power of 2 (2 to the zero power equals 1; 2 to the first power equals 2; 2 to the second power [or two squared] equals 4; 2 to the third power [or two cubed] equals 8; and so on). For example, 1110 in binary is 8 + 4 + 2 + 0, which is equal to 14 in the decimal system. While this 1110 looks more complex to us than 14 does, from the perspective of a computer, the binary system is a much simpler way to manipulate data. The use of binary, representing each unit of information as a sequence of either voltage on or off, allows a computer to perform tasks much more quickly and efficiently than the decimal system would. Table 2.3 lists how numbers are represented in binary code.

Table 2.3: Binary representation of decimals

Decimal Binary

0 0000

1 0001

2 0010

3 0011

4 0100

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 16/52

5 0101

6 0110

7 0111

8 1000

9 1001

10 1010

11 1011

12 1100

13 1101

14 1110

15 1111

For more information on data conversions and numbers greater than 15, see http://www.ascii.cl/conversion.htm (http://www.ascii.cl/conversion.htm) .

A Look Further: Time in Binary

You can even impress your friends and tell time in binary. To see the current time and the binary equivalent, visit: https://minkukel.com/en/clocks/binary-clock/ (https://minkukel.com/en/clocks/binary- clock/) .

Bits and Bytes

A single character or letter of the alphabet requires 8 bits, or 1 byte. This is an example of one byte in binary: 00000000. Each zero is a bit, and all eight zeros is the byte. There are several types of numbering systems (or binary coding schemes), called ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) and EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code). In ASCII, the letter "A" is 0100001, or as a decimal number it is 65. B is 66, C is 67, and so on. You will find EBCDIC used for mainframe computers, and ASCII in the PC (O'Leary & O'Leary, 2008). Another coding system is called Unicode and is currently supported by Apple®, HP, IBM®, Microsoft®, and others (see http://unicode.org/ (http://unicode.org/) ). To see more ASCII codes, visit: http://www.ascii.cl/ (http://www.ascii.cl/) .

We have a few more binary measurements to discuss. One thousand bytes (actually 1024) is called a kilobyte. We have seen an amazing exponential growth in computer memory. During the 1970s, most computers had 48 kilobytes of memory—roughly 48,000 characters of data, or the number of words a 150-page book might contain. Just the text from this digital literacy book would have been too large for these early computers, and no one even conceived of storing high-resolution images on a computer at that time. During the 1990s, the storage unit increased to megabytes (MB), or millions of bytes of data, and today, the amount of RAM in a computer is

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 17/52

Two essential aspects of computer memory are binary code and RAM—temporary storage of data on a chip like this one. If a computer has similarities to a brain, what characteristics of human thought could be compared to RAM?

S.T. Yiap/Purestock/SuperStock

measured in gigabytes (GB), or billions of bytes of data. You might have 4 GB of RAM on your motherboard. Today, there are terabyte (TB) hard drives. The following is the conversion of these terms to the amount of bytes of memory.

1 kilobyte (KB) = 1,024 bytes

1 megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes

1 gigabyte (GB) = 1,073,741,824 bytes

1 terabyte (TB) = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

Again, the more memory the better, because with it, your computer can run more programs simultaneously, and programs that require many calculations (like computer games) can run faster.

Let's consider a more visual real world example of what these mean. Remove some change from your pocket (or piggy bank) and find some pennies. Place 1 penny on your desk. Let's call that 1 bit. Now, find 7 more pennies and place them next to the first. All 8 now can be our visual representation of a byte. Now, unless you have millions of pennies lying around and lots of spare time, don't try this at home. Imagine if you wanted to represent a kilobyte in pennies. If the 8 pennies were 6 inches long, a kilobyte of pennies would stretch 512 feet. If you wanted to continue this down your street, you could put down over 1 million pennies and after 99 miles, you would have achieved a megabyte (MB). If you wanted to see a gigabyte (GB) in pennies, it would extend over 101,000 miles. This would wrap around the earth 4 times! Finally, a terabyte (TB) would stretch over 100 million miles—7 million miles further than the average distance of the earth to the sun. As you can see, these numbers are gigantic.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 18/52

Explore the interaction to learn more about the units of data presented in this section.

There is one more important measure for how quickly the CPU can access its memory, and this is its word size. We are not talking about Microsoft® Word here; instead, a "word" in this context means the number of bits a CPU can access simultaneously. For example, when you hear about something called a 32-bit processor, this means that the CPU can access a string of 32 ones and zeros at once. A 64-bit processor is able to access twice that amount at one time and therefore, results in a faster machine. Early computers were 8-bit or 16-bit and ran more slowly.

Much like the short-term memory in a human, RAM is temporary storage. For items you want to save for longer periods of time, there is the internal hard drive, which is located inside the main computer box and attached to the motherboard with one of those colored wires. The hard drive is where your Word document might reside after you save it, or where all of your pictures from your camera are placed after you upload them. The hard drive typically has much more storage capacity than RAM does. Back in the 1980s, a hard drive might have been 20 MB. Today's hard drives are much larger—perhaps 500 GB. The largest ones are measured by the terabyte (TB), which is 1024 gigabytes of memory.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 19/52

Parallel Processing

Amazing as it may seem, until recently, most computers could do only one thing at a time. It is only because they operate at high speeds that it appears to us that things are happening simultaneously. This is comparable to what happens when you watch a movie. In reality, you are seeing a series of still pictures flashed at a rate of 32 frames per second, which gives the appearance of motion. In a similar sense, the speed of the computer enables it to perform tasks so quickly that it looks as if they are happening all at once. This is what a serial processor means. The CPU reads each instruction sent to it, performs the action, and then moves on to the next instruction.

Parallel processing means that multiple processors work on different problems at the same time. Hyper- threading is a way for software to simulate this parallel processing for each core to perform two tasks at the same time. Intel® has a short video that describes this technology: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/hyper-threading/hyper-threading- technology-video.html (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/hyper-threading/hyper- threading-technology-video.html)

Newer computers have true parallel processing capability, which enables them to carry out more than one instruction simultaneously. Today, a single CPU might contain multiple cores. This enhances the computer's speed and performance and is sometimes known as dual-core or quad-core processing. Intel® is one of the leading manufacturers of processors. For desktop computers, the top-of-the-line processors are the Intel® Core™ i5 (a dual core) and the Intel® Core™ i7 (a quad core). For laptop users, there are the Intel® Core™ i5 and Intel® Core™ i7 mobile processors.

Questions to Consider

1. Why would you need to open a computer? 2. What is the largest board inside the computer called? 3. What is a processor? 4. What does the acronym BIOS stand for? 5. What are some names of different processors? 6. What is the measure of the speed of a CPU? 7. Which is faster, 33 GHz or 33 MHz? 8. What is the difference between RAM and ROM? 9. How many bits are in a byte? How many bytes are in a kilobyte?

10. Which is more computer memory: 100 MB or 100 GB? 11. What is the number 3 in binary? 12. What is the importance of the word size of the CPU?

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 20/52

2.3 Computer Peripherals Today In the previous section, you learned what is inside your computer, including the most important component—the motherboard. Now, let's turn to some of the devices, or peripherals, that you can connect to a computer. Many of these you will be familiar with, and perhaps the description of others might inspire a trip to Best Buy®. The main function of a peripheral device is to enable you to manipulate and control the computer in a specific way. These devices can be broken down into two main categories. The first are "input" devices, or tools you can use to send information into a computer. Various input devices might be a mouse, scanner, keyboard, or DVD disk. "Output" devices are the second type. These are tools for getting data from your computer, and they include the monitor, printer, speakers, or DVD drive. You will notice that the DVD drive (or USB drive) can be both an input or output device, depending on whether you want to store data from your computer (output) or transfer data to your computer (input).

Monitors

Today, many exciting peripherals can enhance the computing experience. Monitors, which provide a visual display for everything you do on a computer, come in a variety of sizes, but most of them have evolved from a square to a rectangular shape. While monitors used to display text-only characters in either amber or green on a black background, now they are extremely high-resolution devices that can display razor-sharp images and video. Most current monitor screens are flat panel, which means they are very thin. This is achieved by using LCD (liquid crystal display), LED (light emitting diode) technology. The monitor's resolution conveys the sharpness of the image. The resolution numbers, such as 640x480 or 1920x1200, represent the size of the screen grid, with the first number indicating the number of horizontal pixels (the smallest point on a monitor that can be altered) and the second indicating the number of vertical pixels. The larger the number of pixels, the better the resolution. The monitors are connected to the computer through a variety of cables. A VGA (video graphics array) cable is for lower resolution, while HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) delivers much better resolution (Rogers, 1983, p. 144).

In the future, we might be using bendable monitors. In March 2012, LG began producing bendable e-paper displays. Where might we see such technology? In April 2012, USA Today speculated that it could be found on car dashboards, backpacks, coffee mugs and other items (Swartz, 2012).

Graphics cards (also known as display cards or video cards) are expansion cards on the motherboard, which can enhance and quicken the display of complex images on the computer monitor.

Printers and Scanners

Like the monitor, printers also come in a variety of styles. Laser printers operate by depositing toner (fine particles that look like black dust) on a piece of paper and then burning them into place with a laser. This is the printer of choice for printing a great deal of text (and black-and-white images) quickly and inexpensively. The inkjet is used when color is needed. It sprays tiny drops of colored ink on the paper. The drops combine to form an image. Inkjet printers use two cartridges: one for color that holds yellow, magenta, and cyan inks, and the other for black ink. Some inkjet printers enable you to replace individual colors, an economical option if you use one color significantly more than others. A more expensive though higher quality color option is a color laser printer. While color printing is slower and more expensive, these printers now can print with such quality that the results can barely be distinguished from professionally developed film. Often, these inkjet printers will also include a scanner. A scanner

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 21/52

is similar to a photocopier in that you lay a document down and close the scanner cover over it. The scanner will then take an image of the document and convert it into ones and zeros to use in the computer. The user, of course, sees an exact image of the document on the monitor and can then manipulate the image. Some scanners will also use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to convert graphical words into computer- searchable text. This is done by comparing the scanned images with known shapes of text characters. OCR is the attempt, which is not always accurate, to match the shapes to the text.

External Storage

One other vital peripheral is external storage, which is a way to preserve and maintain your information outside of the main computer. The earliest form of external storage for a PC was the common cassette recorder, but storage devices have evolved dramatically over time. The 5.25" floppy disk held 640 KB of data, and the 3.5" diskette held 1.44 MB of data. Next, came the Iomega Zip disk, which held 100 MB, and the CD-ROM, which could store approximately 650 MB of information. When you purchase a computer today, you will likely get one with a DVD or Blu-ray drive. Each DVD holds 4.7 to 17 GB, and a Blu-ray stores 25 GB to 50 GB. These are storage amounts for single-layer recording. A dual-layer recording effectively doubles this storage capacity because a second layer of storage actually exists within the single disk. These are often noted by the acronym DL for dual layer.

You can also purchase external hard drives, like the popular Western Digital My Passport®, with three terabytes of memory or more. As we will learn in Chapter 9, the "cloud computing" is now replacing many of these external storage options.

Keyboard and Mouse

The keyboard and mouse also have become sophisticated devices over time. The mouse, which is the device that translates your physical hand movement to movement of a pointer on the monitor screen, used to incorporate a trackball (a rolling rubber ball on the bottom of the mouse) to register movement. Then, the mouse became optical, using a beam of light that reflected off a mirrored surface. The latest mice use infrared technology, like the "Dark Field" from Logitech. These mice usually have two buttons (called the left and right click) and a center wheel that is used for scrolling up or down on long Word documents or Web pages. Other buttons might include a page zoom or forward and backward buttons for Web pages. Most of today's mice and keyboards no longer have cables that physically attach them to the computer. They are wireless (we will discuss Bluetooth™ connectivity later).

Keyboards, which are used to type information into the computer, also come in various shapes and sizes. Some are curved to allow for a more ergonomic (comfortable for the user) positioning of the user's hands. Some have detachable number pads or special keys users can customize themselves. Another distinguishing feature is that they have a row of F or function keys at the top, which are used to perform special functions in different software packages. For example, press F1 in Word and the Help Menu appears. Remember, help is usually always close at hand with the F1 key.

On many modern laptop computers, you will find a square black surface below the keyboard. This is a "touch pad," which replaces the need for a mouse. Users literally touch it, and the heat sensitivity of the finger's movement replicates the movement of a pointer on the screen. With the advent of touch screens today and in the future, these touch pads may disappear. In fact, they already have on tablet computers.

Connections

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 22/52

Other peripheral devices can be connected to your computer, and not all of them are wireless. From the 1980s through the mid-1990s, the most common types of connectors were called parallel and serial ports. Serial ports send data one bit at a time. You can differentiate a serial port from a parallel port because the serial port has fewer pins (for the "male" side) or holes (for the "female" end). Examples of serial connections include the mouse and keyboard connections. Parallel ports can send data much more quickly than serial ports. These multiple bits can be transferred at the same time, thus the term "parallel." Although printers were once commonly connected through a parallel port, today, they almost always have a USB connection.

In 1996, a new type of connection—the USB 1.0—emerged from a collaboration between Microsoft®, Intel®, IBM®, Compaq, Digital, and Northern Telecom. Version USB 3.0, which is now the standard, was first released in November 2008. One interesting use of this technology is the flash drive (also called a jump drive or thumb drive). This is a USB connection that contains storage (as high as 64 GB or more) for quickly storing files. Flash drives are very popular and some are so small they can even hang on a keychain. It is estimated that nearly 6 billion USB devices for flash drives, cameras, external hard drives, printers, keyboards, and related devices are sold each year.

New connectivity devices are on the horizon. One is the Intel® Thunderbolt™ data port that promises even faster data connection speeds. Appearing on Apple® MacBook® Pro laptop computers in May 2011, they promise to have a much wider integration in the future (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-overview-brief.html (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-overview-brief.html) ).

This can be found in several places today, such as on Apple®'s MacBook® Air, MacBook®, Pro, iMac®, and Mac® mini (http://www.Apple.com/thunderbolt/ (http://www.Apple.com/thunderbolt/) ). The PC world is also slowly adopting the Thunderbolt™ technology. In July 2012, PCWorld magazine reported on the five most important Thunderbolt™ devices for transferring data with incredibly fast speeds. This article can be found here (http://www.pcworld.com/article/259593/use_speedy_thunderbolt_hardware_for_faster_data_transfers.html) .

Wireless and Bluetooth™

Another important connection type is Bluetooth™, which has contributed to the rise of wireless connectivity. Though this technology dates back to pioneering work done for the military in the 1940s, it has only recently become a popular connection option for devices like headsets, smartphones, and cameras to communicate with a host computer. In 1994, Swedish engineers at Ericsson were the first to incorporate this technology for personal computer use. Today, there is not a single company that owns the technology but it is shared among multiple organizations in the Bluetooth™ Special Interest Group (SIG). It works by transferring data through radio waves in a Personal Area Network (PAN), which typically extends up to 164 feet.

One frequent question is: Where does the name "Bluetooth" come from? It was initially a term the SIG members adopted and it has remained. They chose it for a 10th century Danish King Harald Blåtand, which translates to Harald Bluetooth in English. Why him? His legacy was in uniting warring groups throughout what are now Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. This "connectivity" is why the SIG chose his name as a symbol (https://www.bluetooth.com/about-us/ (https://www.bluetooth.com/about-us/) ).

eCycling

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 23/52

Computers, cell phones, and other devices can (and in some states must) be recycled or donated for reuse. How have you disposed of used electronics in the past?

Ton Koene/age fotostock/SuperStock

The more you use computers, the more you will find yourself beginning to accumulate old peripherals and hardware you no longer need. Current estimates are that every household in the United States contains 24 electronic devices. This is merely an average. It is important to recycle these devices when you are done with them, and not simply throw them away. In fact, in some states, it is illegal to dispose of certain kinds of computer equipment in a common trash bin (and of course it is also dangerous to dispose of any machine that contains personal data).

Questions to Consider

1. Why are computer peripherals important? 2. What are some examples of computer peripherals? 3. What were some of the key computer peripherals developed at Xerox® PARC? 4. Which represents higher screen resolution: 640x480 or 1920x1200? A VGA cable or an HDMI

cable? 5. What is the difference between a laser printer and an inkjet printer? 6. What are some of the companies that were involved in the development of USB ports? 7. What does Bluetooth mean? 8. What is eCycling?

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 24/52

2.4 The New PC—Mobile Computing It is now common to walk around town with a computer in your pocket that is thousands of times more powerful than the room-sized computer of the 1960s. Gordon Moore, a cofounder of Intel®, predicted in 1965 that every two years, the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit would double while decreasing in cost (Brock & Moore, 2006). Sometimes called Moore's Law, this trend has held true over the past four decades, and it means that over time computers keep getting smaller, more powerful, and less expensive. Today, that computer in your pocket can access a universe of information at the click of a button, pinpoint your exact position on earth, and even make phone calls. In this section, we will explore the exponential growth of mobile computing and consider where this technology may lead us in the future, including methods of augmenting our own reality.

Laptops or Notebooks

Portable computers take many forms. The original portable was called a laptop, and when these computers were first introduced during the 1980s, they were much less powerful than a desktop computer. Today, however, with the miniaturization of components, a laptop can rival the power of many desktops. They can run the same programs, such as Word, Excel®, and PowerPoint®, and are controlled by the same operating systems. These include Vista, Windows® 7, and Windows® 8 for the PCs. An Apple® laptop is called a MacBook®. All of them have Wi-Fi connectivity (capability for a wireless connection to the Internet) so that when you are in a hot spot (a place with a strong Wi-Fi signal), you can log onto an unsecured network. The term notebook is sometimes used interchangeably with laptop, but notebook computers are often slightly smaller in size than laptops.

Netbook

A netbook computer resembles a laptop, but is much smaller in size, thus making it easier to carry around or slip into a briefcase or backpack. As the name implies, netbooks are designed to quickly connect to the Internet for social networking, watching online videos, checking email, and getting important information updates. In addition to being smaller than laptops, netbooks give up some performance to maximize portability and efficiency.

A netbook typically has a 7" to 10" screen as compared with a 14" screen or larger for the laptop (screen size is always measured diagonally from corner to corner). Netbooks also connect to the Web with Wi-Fi, but they boot up much more quickly than laptops because they have a less complicated operating system and fewer bulky applications. Many netbooks connect to the Internet through cell phone wireless networks, which makes getting online easier than with Wi-Fi. While on the road with one of these portable computing devices, you may want to connect back to your home PC or a business network. One way to do this is through a VPN (Virtual Private Network). This is a way for authorized computers outside of the physical confines of a network to connect securely with each other via the Internet. This is increasingly important for the mobile workforce that needs to privately connect a laptop, tablet, or smartphone to a home or office computer. This remains one of the most secure ways to establish that connection and transfer data.

Ultrabook™

To add yet another "book" category to the hardware mix, at the end of 2011, the Ultrabook™ emerged. The Ultrabook™ is neither a brand nor a specific type of system. Instead, it is an Intel® trademarked term that defines specific features in a laptop. It is seen as a response to the success of MacBook® Air, which is an ultra thin laptop. With the Intel® Ivy Bridge Core processor, some of the newer devices have touch screens, which can turn

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 25/52

The portability of Ultrabooks™ has made them popular for use in mobile computing. Here, a representative from Intel® compares the size of an Ultrabook™ with an older laptop.

AP Photo/Intel/Bob Riha, Jr.

and fold and transform into a tablet. One example is the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga.

Though we have covered many types of hardware in this chapter, you will perhaps note that we have still not "touched" upon smartphones or tablet computing. This discussion is saved for our final chapter when we analyze the present and future of computing technologies.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 26/52

Introduction In the last chapter, we explored the history and current state of computer hardware. This included the physical devices that make a computer work. But a computer is much more than the technology. Another equally essential component is the software. This includes the instructions, code, or programs that direct a computer to perform useful tasks at your command. In this chapter, we will explore various software applications, including operating systems, types of software, and other specific examples. We will also examine the language of software, which includes programming languages such as BASIC and C++. By the end of the chapter, you will have a good understanding of the importance of software, how a programmer communicates with the computer, what a computer program actually looks like, and the way the computer carries out the instructions. This knowledge will better familiarize you with the software revolution and how it has transformed and continues to transform the computer industry.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 27/52

The five generations of programming languages have spanned from 1951 to the present.

3.1 What Is a Programming Language? While computer hardware has continued to evolve and improve over the last several decades, an equally important story is the development of software. Consider the following statistic. In 1981, the software industry had $140 million in sales. Three years later, sales had increased to $1.6 billion (Campbell-Kelly & Aspray, 1996, p. 260). Today, the sales of video game software and hardware alone were nearly $25 billion in 2011 (Entertainment Software Association, 2012). Computing languages—or ways that humans can tell a computer what to do—make this all possible. Since the middle of the 20th century, there have been five key generations of programming languages, as shown in Figure 3.1. Exploring these developments will enable you to better understand the present state of the software industry.

Figure 3.1: Progression of programming language

The First Generation—Machine Language

First Generation software was developed between 1951 and 1959, and was written in a code known as machine language (Dale & Lewis, 2006, pp. 18–23). We have already described the binary data structure of a computer. This is also called base-2 (zeros and ones) as compared with our own counting system of base-10 (numbers 0 through 9). Machine language is a sequence of zeros and ones that symbolize both instructions and data. For example, the code for an addition function might be 100101 (different processors used different coding schemes). To tell a computer to add the numbers 1 and 3, a programmer would enter 100101 000001 000011. Imagine how complex a complicated machine coded program would look. Programmers quickly realized they needed a better way to write programs that would tell the computer what to do. The first advance was the development of assembly language, which used mnemonic codes (three letters that had some relation to the operation). For example, ADD was an addition function, while SUB was a subtraction function) to replace all the zeros and ones (Dale, Weems, & Dale, 1998, p. 7).

The Second Generation—The First High-Level Languages

Between 1959 and 1965 came the Second Generation. Assembly language was considered a low-level language in that it did not resemble the normal way we speak or write. Two of the first high-level computer languages to be

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 28/52

developed were Fortran and COBOL. Fortran was a programming language designed for scientists, and its strength was in numerical calculation. COBOL (an acronym for Common Business Oriented Language) was used for business applications. We will learn more about a fundamental flaw in COBOL when we discuss Y2K in a later chapter. This flaw threatened to bring the world to a standstill on New Year's Eve 1999.

The source program is the code a programmer writes in a high-level language. When finished, the programmer sends it to a compiler that transforms it into the zeros and ones of the machine language, and then it is called the object program. In other words, the process moves from source program to compiler to object program. You can think of the language hierarchy in these terms: human thought (in your mind), natural language (speech and writing), high-level language (Fortran, COBOL), low-level language (Assembler), and machine code (binary).

In the midst of these developments, programmers began to specialize in two different directions. Systems programmers concentrated on developing compilers and other tools to convert high-level languages into machine code. Applications programmers spent all their time developing applications for use on a computer. They did not necessarily concern themselves with how the compiler translated this work into the binary machine code.

The Third Generation—The Era of the Operating System

Third Generation software emerged between 1965 and 1971. This became the era of the operating system. Programmers soon realized that the computer was able to execute codes and instructions much faster than they could develop new programs. There was significant idle time during which the computer just sat there doing nothing. Programmers decided to capitalize on this by developing an operating environment in which the computer could always be performing some type of useful function while it awaited the programmer's next command. Thus, the operating system was born. One example of this is Windows®, and we will discuss the concept of operating systems in detail later in this chapter.

But for now, consider the following types of software and languages that were being written for the computer: machine language, assembly language, high-level language, systems software, operating systems, and application software. Let's look at how all of these interacted with each other. For example, word processing software (the application) worked within the computer environment (operating system) and was written in a high- level language like COBOL (the source code) and then compiled down into assembly and machine languages (the object code). These different types of codes, and their interactions, are entirely invisible to users who see only a screen on which they can type and edit their words. The software operates in the background, but an extensive team of programmers with diverse skill levels is required to make it all work as simply as possible for the user.

The Fourth Generation—Structured Programming

Fourth Generation software arose between 1971 and 1989, when programmers became tired of some of the limited functionality of Fortran and COBOL. As a result, they developed a new technique called structured programming, which involved writing blocks of code, called subroutines, to handle specific tasks, while the main program simply accessed them when needed. This is also called the top-down model of programming. Examples of new languages that took advantage of structured programming were Pascal, BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), C, and C++. In the early 1980s, Bell Laboratories developed C++ as an extension of the original C. If you were developing an operating system, you would typically select C or C++ as your language (Deitel & Deitel, 2008).

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 29/52

Programming languages such as HTML can seem like a foreign language, but programmers must be fluent in one or several programming languages. Does learning a programming language appeal to you? Why or why not?

iStockphoto/Thinkstock

The Fifth Generation—Object-Oriented Languages

Today, we are in the midst of the Fifth Generation of computing languages, which began in 1990 and extends to the present. These include object-oriented languages and also programming designed for the World Wide Web. Programmers use object-oriented languages to create gigantic programs like those developed by Microsoft®. Their strength is handling objects, such as graphics or an interface. An example of this is the Java computing language. One of its powerful features are small applications, called applets, that perform one specific task. While we will discuss the World Wide Web in later sections, for now, let's simply place it within our timeline of computer languages. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee developed HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), which is the protocol that enables Web browsers, such as Netscape Navigator® at the time, or Internet Explorer™, Firefox®, Chrome™, or Safari® to share and display Web pages. It does this through a language that defines Web-based structures such as titles, headings, paragraphs, hyperlinks, and images. HTML and faster connections to the Internet allowed the development of Web pages that displayed text, graphics, sound, and eventually video in such a way that it did not matter what type of computer was accessing them. The Web pages displayed equally well on a Mac® or a PC. Five years after the development of HTML, James Gosling at Sun Microsystems developed the Java programming language.

Today, Java is one of the primary languages of the Internet (as well as Flash®, Silverlight, and HTML 5). If you met a Web programmer in any part of the world, you might not speak his or her native language, but if you knew one of these languages you would be able to easily discuss programming together. Java is based on C and C++ computer languages, and was created many years after them.

Numerous Web programming languages are in use today, including PHP (for Web servers), MySQL (an open- source database server), Perl (for text-processing applications), and ASP.net (Microsoft®'s Web programming language used mostly in corporate environments). JavaScript is the name of the language programmers use to make many websites as powerful as they are. This includes many of the visual effects you see on some sites, as well as the interactivity that responds to the commands and actions of the user.

It is important to understand that programming languages are changing all the time, unlike the English language, which changes only through the addition of new words. The future promises more programming language changes in part because as the hardware evolves, so, too must the languages for communicating and manipulating it. According to a January 2012 InfoWorld article, the following are some of the future programming languages that might become widespread: Dart (created by Google for Web programming), Ceylon (a so-called Java killer), and Go (an attempt by Google to create a simple and powerful programming language much like C or C++) (McAllister, 2012).

Now that you have an understanding of when some of the most important computing languages were developed, in the next section, we will take a closer look at what some of this code looks like.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 30/52

Questions to Consider

1. Why are programming languages important? 2. What are the five generations of computer software? 3. What does a compiler do? 4. What is the difference between machine language and assembly language? 5. What are some examples of high-level computing languages? 6. What was the advantage of structured programming? 7. What are some examples of structured programming languages? 8. What are examples of Fifth Generation computing languages?

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 31/52

3.2 The Basics of Programming Who are these programmers that have to master various types of arcane programming languages? These people are sometimes called computer scientists, and they go to college to study multiple programming languages as well as engineering. This training gives them an understanding of both computer hardware and software. Computer science focuses on the development, analysis, and evaluation of algorithms. An algorithm consists of rules for finding a solution to a problem in a defined number of steps. Think of it like a complete plan of action to achieve a specific goal. Here is an example of an algorithm you might construct to get to work:

Step 1: Get in car.

Step 2: Start car.

Step 3: Check to see if you have gas. If you have gas, go to Step 5. If you do not have gas, go to Step 4.

Step 4: Get gas.

Step 5: Continue drive to work.

In a real algorithm, Step 3 is considered a conditional statement and appears in a triangle box to designate that a decision needs to be made. It is conditional because depending on the answer, the logic goes in a different direction.

Computer scientists are involved in many different activities that include artificial intelligence, networking, human– computer interaction, databases, Web and multimedia design, management information systems, computer security, software engineering, and computational science. It is an exciting and diverse field (Zelle, 2004, pp. 4–5).

Interviews from the Field: Senior Software Developer

What are your primary responsibilities?

I design and implement backend services for our digital content delivery system.

What are the most important skills needed for your job?

Understanding the business problem and translating this knowledge into technical solutions. Designing a system that is robust and scalable, while being maintainable.

What do you like best about your job?

I enjoy interacting with the subject matter experts and seeing their visions realized. I also like seeing my solution in use by the end users.

What got you interested in entering this field?

Solving real, day-to-day human problems with computer systems.

What is your educational background?

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 32/52

I majored in Computer Science, which equipped me with analytical thinking and system design skills.

Can you give an example of a project you are working on now?

I provide a common authentication/authorization subsystem for multiple different applications.

Step One in Programming

How do programmers begin their work? The first step is to determine a problem they want a computer to solve. The second step is to work through the algorithm. The third step is to design the flow chart or the general logical procedure that the program will follow. This makes it appear as if intelligent decisions are being made. The final step is to actually write the program on the computer, try it out, and see if it works. If it does not work, then the programmer will begin looking for errors or bugs in the program.

The story of how the term bugs originated is an interesting one. It dates back to Admiral Grace Hopper, who was a programmer for the Mark II computer during the 1940s. Her computer kept failing, and she could not figure out the reason until she discovered an actual moth near a computer relay. She removed the moth, taped it on the wall, and labeled it with a note: "software bug." The term has stuck, and a bug today in computer terminology is an error in the software program (Patton, 2002, p.6). This error could be something as simple as a typo—for example, entering the word "ptint" instead of "print." Or it could be a more complex problem involving faulty logic, in which case a more detailed debugging process that removes the errors is required.

BASIC

The classic way to demonstrate differences between various programming languages is what is known as the "Hello World!" program. This short and simple program merely instructs a computer to display "Hello World!" on the monitor. The first example is in the BASIC programming language. Remember, BASIC is an acronym for Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Elements of this language are still used today with a derivation called Visual Basic. (The newer language called Visual Basic was first developed in 1991 to help programmers develop functions and applications for graphical systems) (Patrick, 2006). The numbers on the left are line numbers for each of the instructions. Only one instruction goes on each line. Each line can be labeled with any whole number, but the numbers typically increase by 10s. Here is the program:

10 Print "Hello World!" 20 End

When you run or execute the above program, the computer displays "Hello World!" on the screen. As you can see, "BASIC" really can be quite "basic."

Looping in BASIC

Now, let's explore a more complex program written in BASIC. Follow along in this logical process, and you will begin to understand some of the power of computer programming. Let's say you want the computer to ask someone their name, and have them tell the computer to count to a certain number. This requires a user input and also a looping function. The program would look like this:

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 33/52

10 PRINT "Hello. What is your name?" 20 INPUT A$ 30 PRINT "What number would you like me to count to?" 40 INPUT B 50 FOR X=1 to B 60 PRINT X 70 NEXT X 80 END

As a note, the dollar sign character in line 20, $, means that the input will be a string, meaning a "string of text." This is the person's name.

In contrast, look at the input command in line 40. This just has the variable B, which means the computer should expect the user to enter a number, and not a string of characters like a person's name.

When you execute the above program, the computer asks for your name and waits until you type it in and press the Enter key. The computer remembers this as the variable A$ (called a string of characters). Then, the computer asks for a number to count to, and again waits until you type in a number and press Enter. The computer remembers this as an integer named B. Then, in lines 50 through 70, the computer initiates a programming loop (lines of programming code that are repeated over and over with different variables). Beginning with the number 1, it travels through the loop B times, which is the number you typed in for the computer to count to. The number X keeps track of where the loop is, and then prints that out. The loop ends when it reaches the number B and then moves on to instruction 80, which tells the computer to end the program. So, if your name happened to be Jane and you wanted the computer to count to 3, the computer would execute the program in this sequence, line by line: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 50, 60, 70, 50, 60, 70, 80. This order of instructions executed by the computer is its logic trace. The screen output would appear as follows:

Hello. What is your name? Jane What number would you like me to count to? 3 1 2 3

This is a very simplistic program, but it illustrates some important concepts such as input, output, computer loops, and the sequential nature in which the computer executes a program. In the simplest applications, a computer does one thing at a time, completing each command before moving on to the next one. Although the above example of a computer program was just eight lines long (and referred to as the computer code), more complex programs can number into the hundreds of thousands of lines, with teams of programmers assigned to create different sections or subroutines.

Logic and Branching in BASIC

Let's move to a more advanced example—one that will illustrate the importance of computer logic. This gives the computer the appearance of intelligence. In this example, you will also see a program branch, meaning that, based on the results of a decision (called an if–then statement), the computer jumps to a line number that is not sequential. Here is our task. Consider that you want the computer to ask a user what university she attends. If she says that she goes to School University, the computer will congratulate her. If she types in the name of another

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 34/52

university, then the computer will invite her to visit the School University website. How does the computer know how to do this? Here is the program:

10 PRINT "Hello. What university do you attend?" 20 INPUT A$ 30 IF A$="School" THEN GOTO 100 ELSE GOTO 40 40 PRINT "You should check out www.School.edu sometime." 50 PRINT "Thank you for talking to me." 60 END 100 PRINT "Great! School is a wonderful place to learn!" 110 GOTO 50

Here is what the screen display would look like if you attended School. (The instruction sequence is as follows: 10, 20, 30, 100, 110, 50, 60.)

Hello. What university do you attend? School Great! School is a wonderful place to learn! Thank you for talking to me.

In the above example, the if-then statement in line 30 represents the logic. If you enter "School," then the logic statement is true, and the program branches to line 100 and runs a short subroutine. If the user does not answer School, then the line 30 logic statement is false and does not branch. It executes the ELSE statement, passes to line 40, and tells the user to check out the School website. Then, the program displays, "Thank you for talking to me," and ends. In this case, the instruction sequence is as follows: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. Here is what the screen display would look like if you did not enter School:

Hello. What university do you attend? University of Earth You should check out www.School.edu sometime. Thank you for talking to me.

The above program gives the appearance that the computer is intelligent and listening to the user's response. While these are simple text-based examples, they represent fundamental programming concepts for all software applications. We will now explore examples of modern day software applications and operating systems. Although we will not delve into the extremely complex computer code for these programs, by now you should have a feel for the type of work that goes into making these programs come alive.

Technology Today: Other Uses for Computer Programming

Whenever you work on a computer, you're using some type of programming language. Fortunately, the average computer user doesn't need to speak, understand—or even be aware of—the particular programming language they're using at any given time in order to make a computer do what they want it to do.

Professional computer programmers have created sets of instructions—the software programs that convert the commands you enter with your keyboard or mouse into language the computer

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 35/52

understands. As programming languages have become more sophisticated and easier to use (at least by professional programmers), the uses for software have expanded as well.

Intelligent Programs

Programmers are now able to write "intelligent" programs that perform a multitude of tasks. For example, manufacturers increasingly rely on computer programs that employ complex mathematical formulas known as algorithms to create production and delivery schedules that allow them to fulfill customer orders in the most cost-effective manner.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have written a similar program that allows a car to maneuver through traffic without a driver. This program sorts information captured by onboard cameras and directs the car to a lane of traffic. The program then detects how conditions change as the car travels in order to keep it in the correct lane (North Carolina State University, 2010).

The team that wrote this program envisions it enabling the development of new automotive safety features, such as systems that take over the steering of a car when a driver falls asleep at the wheel or suffers a medical emergency, such as a heart attack that interferes with the ability to drive. This technology also could be used by the military to develop unmanned vehicles that would conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions or transport materials through hostile areas.

The methods used in computer programming have the potential to bring about improvements in many other areas, including medical science. For example, a team of biologists and biomedical engineers from Boston University and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology applied the principles of computer programming to develop a precise method of counting cells in the human body (Keim, 2009). Although their work is still in its early stages, this team hopes to create what amounts to biomedical machines that can be programmed to locate disease-carrying cells. Once these infected cells are located, the team hopes to alter their genetic patterns, thus eradicating the disease, through methods that also rely on computer programming principles. One proposed method would be to inject a compound that can cure the disease into another cell, and then program that cell to release the curative compound at the appropriate place and time to eliminate the threat to the damaged cell. Such a solution conceivably could cure a host of life-threatening diseases.

Links for More Information

Cellular Counter Brings Computer Programming to Life http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/cellcounters/ (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/cellcounters/)

Computer Program Allows Car to Stay in Its Lane http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100406093630.htm (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100406093630.htm)

TEDTalks: Sebastian Thrun—Google's Driverless Car

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 36/52

Motivated by personal tragedy, Sebastian Thrun set a goal of saving a million lives each year. Here he discusses helping to build Google's GPS-powered driverless car. Do you agree that letting computers take the wheel will reduce traffic deaths?

Questions to Consider

1. If you were a computer programmer, how would you choose a computer language to write in?

2. What is the definition of computer science? 3. What types of work do computer scientists perform? 4. What is an algorithm? 5. What is a computer bug? 6. Why is the "Hello World!" program significant? 7. Why is a loop in a computer program important? 8. What is the function of a branch in a computer program?

TEDTalks: Sebastian Thrun—Google’s Driverless Car

© Infobase. All Rights Reserved. Length: 04:09   

 0:000:00 / 4:09 / 4:09 1x1x

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 37/52

3.3 Systems Software—The Operating System In this section and the next, you will learn about the three main types of systems software: operating systems, utilities, and device drivers. In general, these are the software programs that define the environment in which you will spend your time using application software such as Word or PowerPoint®. We will conclude this chapter by exploring some basic examples of application software.

What Is an Operating System?

One of the most important types of systems software programs is the operating system (Godbole, 2005, pp. 1– 11). This is the set of programs that is sold with a computer and designed to make it easier for you to perform useful functions with it. The operating system has no specific user or function in mind. You may want to use the computer to play games, send email, Skype™, chat, do taxes, post Instagram pictures, develop spreadsheets, update your Facebook status, or write a book. No matter what you choose to do, the operating system is designed to help you access and use the software application that meets your needs. Along with providing a space in which to use these applications, another job of the operating system is security, or making sure that the information developed by one user cannot be found by another. Finally, the operating system is closely tied to the computer's memory. One of its most important jobs is to allocate memory usage in a way that will make the computer operate most effectively. Related to this is the essential role the operating system plays in data storage, as well as file and folder management.

Three main types of operating systems exist today. The first is a stand-alone operating system that operates on a PC, such as Windows®. The second is a network operating system that manages multiple computers and controls how they share data and communicate with each other. The final type is an embedded operating system, which is found in a variety of applications such as home appliances, factory equipment, environmental monitoring systems, aircraft control panels, automobile dashboards, video game consoles, and so on (Pottie & Kaiser, 2005, p. 1).

How do you start up the operating system? It is as easy as turning on the computer itself. This can be done through a cold boot, which means physically pressing the power button to start your computer. You could also do a warm boot, which is the selection of a restart function in the operating system itself. A warm boot is sometimes used when you have installed new programs and the computer needs a general reset. Note that if you are having problems with Windows® due to a faulty program, or a variety of other hardware reasons, you might want to boot in Windows® Safe Mode. This is a startup that bypasses all of the programs and drivers not critical to Windows® booting.

Once the computer boots, you will see several important things. The first might be a flash screen indicating the name of the computer, such as Dell™ or Apple®, and the type of operating system, such as Windows® 8 or Mac® OS X®. The arrow on the screen is your pointer, which is controlled by the mouse (on a PC), touchpad (on a laptop), or finger (with a tablet). There are also various icons that might represent other parts of the operating system or assorted applications. The task bar, or dock, is often at the bottom of your screen, which is also the place where you can quickly see which programs are active and open.

Early Operating Systems

Just like the five generations of software languages, there have also been generations of operating systems. However, the first generations of computers had no operating systems at all. For example, from 1945 to 1955,

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 38/52

when computers were huge mechanical devices, the operating system did not exist, and the machines were very difficult to use as a result.

The second generation, from 1955 to 1965, was the age of the transistor, and again there was no electronic operating system. The computers of this era were batch machines, meaning that the programmer or user created a stack of physical cards with holes in them, and the patterns of holes in these cards told the computer what to do. The so-called "operating system" at this time was simply the manual process of loading the information from these cards into the computer's memory.

The third generation of operating systems developed between 1965 and 1980, and was defined by the integrated circuit. As we have seen before, these were still mainframe computers dominated by the IBM® 360. These early operating systems were written in assembly language that allowed the user to enter commands into the computer through the keyboard rather than a punched card. The operating systems of this generation also allowed time sharing, in which multiple computer terminals could be attached to the central computer, enabling several people to send commands to the mainframe at the same time.

DOS

The fourth generation of operating systems is where we are today. From 1980 to the present, computers have incorporated Large Scale Integration (LSI) circuits in which thousands of transistors can be placed on a single chip. This development led to the birth of desktop computers. The first operating system for personal computers was the Control Program for Microcomputers, or CP/M, during the 1970s. However, a more significant development was the emergence of DOS, which stands for Disk Operating System. This acronym is important because it relates to our earlier point that operating systems play a central role in managing data and files. The "disks" in this acronym were the physical locations of data storage. "Files" are an individual computer document such as a word processing file, spreadsheet file, or image file.

Originally developed by Seattle Computer for the Intel® 8086, DOS opened up new ways for users to interact with their computers. Bill Gates, Microsoft® founder, who was also operating in Seattle, saw the potential of DOS and acquired the company. In 1981, it became known as MS-DOS for an IBM® computer, and PC-DOS for a clone. The final version of MS-DOS was released in 1994 (Version 6.22).

As mentioned earlier, when DOS users turned on their machines, they saw the command prompt or C prompt, which was C:\ followed by a blinking cursor. (In other words, DOS did not have a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that computer users are accustomed to today.) From there, they typed in commands they wanted the computer to perform. To start a program, they would type "run," followed by the program name. To view a list of all the files in a given folder, users would type the "dir" command. If users had several programs they liked to access, they might write their own program using a simplistic DOS batch file. These commands were often confusing for the novice to create. They did allow users to personalize their computers by, for example, having the computer display a personal greeting instead of the impersonal C prompt when the machine booted up.

DOS could be frustrating to users who were trying to perform a task as simple as copying a file from one place to another. To copy a document from the computer to a floppy disk, you had to type a command, such as: COPY C:\example.doc A:\example.doc. This meant that you were copying a file from "C," which was the name for the hard drive, to "A," which was the name for the floppy disk. The C hard drive in this example was the source, and the A floppy drive was the destination. Even today, when copying files it is important to think about the source and

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 39/52

Microsoft®'s Windows 95 enabled users to navigate program menus from the Start Button, and allowed desktop organization via shortcuts. How would these features improve productivity?

AP Photo/Robert Sorbo

destination. These letters continue to be important, as they designate the hard drive, the USB drives, or the DVD drives that are connected to the computer.

Windows®

The next stage of operating systems had a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Microsoft® again took the lead here, although the company borrowed heavily from the Macintosh® and also the pioneering work done at Xerox® PARC. Beginning in the 1980s, Microsoft® called its new operating system Windows®. It has had a variety of releases that continue to this day. Versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 were not as commercially successful as later versions. The idea behind them was that instead of running just one program at a time, as with DOS, the user could now have a variety of "windows" open on the screen at any given time. Each window could run a different program, and data could be shared between them. For example, if you were working on a word processing document and were also doing calculations in a spreadsheet, in DOS you would have to work on one document, save the changes, close the program, and then open the other. With Windows®, both programs could remain active, allowing you to copy data from the spreadsheet and paste it into the document that was open in the word processor. This capacity for multitasking and sharing data between programs was a tremendous advance in productivity. The problem, however, was that these early versions of Windows® were quite slow.

How do you control window sizes? Computer monitors are limited in size (even though they are getting larger and larger each day for the desktop), so only a certain number of programs can be easily displayed at one time. If you are working in one program and want that program to fill your monitor screen, you can maximize it. This button is found in the upper right-hand corner of the window, just to the left of the red X. The red X closes the program, and the maximize button to its left makes the program window fill the entire screen. The button to the left of that (which looks like a minus sign) is the minimize function, which closes the window without terminating the program. The program is still running, and it can be found on the bar, known as the taskbar, on the very bottom of the screen. To resize the window, click the restore down button, which is also to the left of the X. Hover the cursor over the edges of the window, and it changes into a left–right arrow. Now, you can click and drag the edges of the window horizontally. You can do the same vertically as well.

With the release of Windows® 3.1, some of the early visions of GUI became a reality. Then, in 1995, came Windows® 95, which promoted a new feature called the start button. Advertising Windows® 95 with the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" as its theme song, Windows® promised—and for the most part delivered—a higher level of performance and user productivity. To launch a program in Windows® 95, users clicked "start" and then scrolled through the various program menus. They could also create an icon for it on their monitor desktop. As one Windows® guide stated, "One of the ideas behind the design of Windows® and of most Windows® applications is that you should treat the screen as you would a desk." On a real desk, people laid papers from different projects

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 40/52

on top of each other. Finally, Windows® had provided a way to simulate this type of organization (or in some cases disorganization) on the computer (McBride, 1996, p. 10). This same principle guided later releases of Windows®, including Windows® 98, Windows® ME, Windows® 2000, Windows® XP, Windows® Vista, Windows® 7, and now Windows® 8.

In the fall of 2012, Microsoft® released their latest operating system, called Windows® 8. Code-named Metro, it focuses on tablets and laptops, as well as the standard desktop PC. For the mobile devices (and even for the desktop), it has a well-integrated touch system that is not currently featured in Windows® 7.

Navigating Windows®

What are the common features of a Windows® operating system? The start button is still located in the lower left- hand corner (although it typically no longer says "start") with the four-panel red, green, blue, and yellow Windows® logo. The Windows® logo used to be four interlocking jigsaw pieces, signifying how each of its main software programs could share data and work together. When you click this button, you will see the quick launch menu of programs most recently accessed on the computer. On the right side of the start menu are links to documents, pictures, music, games, and help.

Windows® has several standard icons that appear on the monitor, including the recycle bin, where all the deleted files are sent. Once there, they are not actually deleted yet. If you want to retrieve these items from the bin, just double-click it, and the file(s) can be restored back to the desktop. If you really want to delete files, then periodically right-click on the recycle bin and empty it.

My Computer is another important icon. Double-clicking this icon will open up a preview of the various hard drives and external drives located on the computer. Usually, the main hard drive is called the C drive, a convention that goes back to the old C prompt in DOS systems. Under the drive letter is a bar that indicates how much total storage has been used. Other icons here will include any DVD drives that are connected to the computer and also perhaps a recovery drive. If you have a portable flash drive and plug it into a USB port, this is the place where you will access files on it. The operating system will assign it a letter name when you plug in the USB device.

Mac® OS and Linux®

Up to this point, we have concentrated on the PC side of the operating system, but the Macintosh® has also had significant developments. The first operating system was the "Classic" Mac® OS, which was in use from 1984 to 2001. Unlike IBM® PCs of that era, the Mac® had no command line (C prompt) at all. Instead, it had an entirely graphical interface. In 2001, a major operating system advance came with the Mac® OS X®. Today, this is known as Mac® OS X® Snow Mountain Lion, which is a 64-bit operating system designed to be easier to use and more stable than Windows®.

Linux® is a third significant operating system. Linus Torvalds developed Linux® in 1991 at the University of Helsinki. This is a version of the UNIX operation system first developed by AT&T programmers at Bell Labs in 1969 and was used primarily to run large, networked computers. One of the important features of Linux® is that it is open source. This means that Torvalds put all of his code online, let people download it for free, and then invited users to suggest and implement programming improvements. Though the number of users that install it is growing, Windows® and OS X® still dominate the market because Linux® is more complicated, and a variety of programs are not written for it. Programs that are not open source, like Windows®, are closed to user access.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 41/52

Only Microsoft® can update the code. This open-source approach to software development has been duplicated

with applications like the Firefox® Web browser.

A Look Further: Navigating MAC® OS

Go to the Apple® website to learn more about using MAC® OS. http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/ (http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/)

Questions to Consider

1. When you use a computer, when do you interact with the operating system? 2. What is the importance of an operating system? 3. What does DOS stand for? 4. What is a computer window? 5. What are some of the basic features of the Windows® operating system? 6. What is the purpose of the My Computer icon in the Windows® operating system? 7. What are some examples of Mac® operating systems?

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 42/52

3.4 Utilities, Drivers, and Applications Now that we've explored operating systems, it's time to look at other types of software—utilities, drivers, and applications. Most likely, you have the greatest familiarity with applications, as these are the main programs you use to actually do things with a computer. This might include Word for word processing, or even the latest game for enjoyment. A second type of systems software is called drivers that are small programs that enable your software to communicate with the specific hardware you own (such as word processing and your printer). Finally, there are the utilities, which are embedded into every computer and perform vital maintenance and operative functions. Taken together, these applications and systems software (utilities, drivers, and the operating systems we covered in the previous section) play a central role in defining and shaping your overall computing experience.

Utilities

If you think about the utilities in your house, they are the basic components that make it work, such as plumbing, heating, water, electricity, and gas. In a similar way, computer utilities are the software programs that make a computer work. The way to find many of these programs is to click the start button in a Windows® system. This is where you can find a list of important peripherals attached to the computer, and also tools to manage the system. In the "Classic View" of the Control Panel (which is the location where users can control a number of internal computer utilities) are icons to add hardware, to add and remove programs, security, and a firewall, and to select other performance options. Another way to access utilities is to click the start button and then double-click the Accessories folder. There, you will see another System Tools subfolder. This includes important utilities such as backup, disk cleanup, disk defragmenter, system information, and system restore.

At this point, it is also important to mention that the file structure of all personal computers is hierarchical. To understand what hierarchical means, think of the file structure as a family tree that has multiple levels. To begin with, a file is an individual document. It could be a word processing file, a spreadsheet file, or a presentation file, for example. When you work with computers for a while, you will start to accumulate lots of files. The computer equivalent of a real-life filing cabinet is used to maintain order. When you have several types of files associated with a particular job or activity, you will want to create a folder. For example, you might create a folder on your hard drive called Introduction to Digital Literacy. In this folder, you would place all of the various files that you created and saved for this class. As time goes by, you will find that you have created many folders. These can also be organized through the creation of subfolders within folders. As you progress through your education, you might create one main folder under your school's name, and then inside that folder would be other subfolders for each class you take. In those folders could be still more folders, or the individual files that you created. This is the hierarchical file structure. It is very important to design an intuitive file management system for yourself. This will keep you organized and efficient. All of these documents should be in one master folder called My Documents, just as all of your images should be stored in My Pictures, and music in My Music.

While you are not required to put your word processing or spreadsheet documents (or any other kind of document) in the My Documents folder, it is simply good organizational practice.

Despite our best efforts to stay organized, sometimes we all misplace a document that we have created. To assist you in such situations, a helpful searching function is built into the operating system. Select the start button again, and a dialog box will appear that says "start search." Begin typing the keywords of the document as best as you can remember them, and various files that match these criteria will appear in the box above the dialog box.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 43/52

Screen savers, originally necessary to protect the monitor's computer screen, quickly became a fun way to personalize a computer. Today, users can also add background images to cell phones and tablets.

iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Additional applications are bundled into the operating system. Clicking on Start, All Programs, and Accessories will help you find them. These include a calculator, a notepad, a Paint program, and a variety of games, such as Solitaire. You will also find some important system utilities, such as a disk defragmenter, that you should periodically run to clean up your hard drive and help it operate more efficiently. A disk defragmenter (or defrag) is an important utility that should be run at least once a month. This is necessary because when you delete a file or folder from your computer, you are essentially letting the computer know it can reuse this space as needed, but if you do a lot of deleting, your hard drive will have many small holes and become "fragmented." Disk fragmentation can slow down access time to your data. Running the disk defragmenter eliminates this problem by cleaning up all the holes. Access this utility by selecting Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then Disk Defragmenter.

Although they are not technically utility programs, there are fun ways to personalize the computer within the operating system. You can change the wallpaper or the background image on the screen by right-clicking on the desktop in Windows® and selecting Personalize. To modify the wallpaper, click on Desktop Background and then use the Browse button to find the image you want to use as wallpaper. Double-click on the image to make it appear in the background behind all of your icons.

Choosing a screen saver, which appears after a certain period of user inactivity on the computer, is another way to personalize the computer. Many years ago, with the older monitors, if one image stayed on the screen for a long period of time, a shadow of the image would actually become burned into the cathode ray tube (CRT) and remain even after the monitor was turned off. To prevent this, programmers began including a screen saver in the operating system. This meant that after a certain amount of time, an animation would take over the screen, such as the famous flying toaster, the Windows® logo, or flying shapes and colors. These animations prevented the screen from burning. When the user wanted to get back to work, any motion of the mouse or press of the keyboard cleared the screen saver and returned the desktop to its previous state. Although monitors no longer burn, today, the screen saver

remains as customizable nostalgia.

One other important utility is System Restore. Sometimes, computers have software problems and have been known to have critical errors (in Windows® this is often called the Blue Screen of Death because your monitor screen will turn blue). To recover from such errors, Windows® will seek to return to the latest restore point when things were working well. System Restore typically creates a new restore point every day, and also updates whenever you add a new program or device. So, if you get a crash, select the restore point that you want to return to by selecting Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then System Restore.

The final groups of important utilities are called "Hardware and Sound," and are found in the Control Panel. The hardware side of this enables you to add peripherals to your computer. For example, if you purchase a new printer, you would select Start, Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, and then Add a Printer. You can also adjust your mouse settings, power options for battery usage (if you have a laptop), scanners, cameras, game controllers,

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 44/52

and other input devices. The second important feature here is your sound control. In this option, you can adjust your system volume, change system sounds, and manage your audio devices (such as speakers).

Drivers

Another type of systems software is called device drivers. What are these? They are a piece of software—a relatively small computer program—that lets more advanced applications share data with a piece of hardware.

One example is a device driver for Microsoft® Word (the advanced application) to send data to a printer (the hardware).

In the control panel, there is another folder known as the device manager. This helps you manage the various drivers in your computer. Device drivers are an important part of the systems software. Each device driver is written for specific hardware devices, and is unique to that device. For example, if you purchase a new printer, it will come with a DVD that has device drivers on it. These programs need to be installed so the printer will be able to communicate with your PC. Sometimes, hardware devices are called plug and play. This means that once you plug in the peripheral, often through a USB port, the computer will recognize it and begin communicating without the need to install a specific driver. When you no longer need a device, you will want to uninstall it. This is done by going to Control Panel, Programs, and then Uninstall a Program. When you select these options on a PC, you will get a list of all the programs on your computer. Highlight what you no longer want from the list, and then select Uninstall.

Applications

Finally, we have arrived at the real reason we have computers in the first place—applications! There are thousands upon thousands of computer applications, which are programs that you purchase, install, and run on your computer. It would be impossible to cover them all here, but let's explore some general features of applications. These applications can be divided into three main categories: business suites, personal suites, and specialized software. Microsoft® Office is an example of a business suite. In general, a software suite is a group of software programs that are bundled together. A business suite includes software programs designed to improve business productivity. When you purchase it, you will receive several sophisticated software programs such as Word (a word processor that lets you create documents, letters, brochures, flyers, and so on), PowerPoint® (presentation software that lets you create animated slide shows), Excel® (a spreadsheet program that lets you work with numbers in powerful ways), Access® (a database that lets you manage lists of information and related data), and Outlook® (for sending, receiving, and creating email).

A personal suite usually includes less sophisticated programs than the ones previously mentioned, although they

perform similar functions. Microsoft® Works, a personal suite, is less expensive than the Microsoft® Office business suite, but does not provide as many options. While it includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database, and a calendar, these do not have the same powerful functions as, for example, Word or Excel®. But the documents they produce are compatible with the complete programs. One of the things that it lacks is presentation software like PowerPoint®.

"Specialized software" is the largest category of applications. These programs might include Internet browsers, business software, and imaging software that allow you to create and manipulate pictures. Although we will discuss the Internet in detail in a later chapter, mentioned here are several important browsing applications you

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 45/52

can use. A Web browser enables you to search and view the Internet. These applications include Internet Explorer™ (Microsoft®), Firefox® (Mozilla®), Safari® (Apple®), and Google Chrome™.

You can purchase specialized business applications to help you keep track of your personal finances or even manage an entire company. Quicken® and QuickBooks® are applications best used for personal finance, while much larger and more expensive accounting packages like MAS 90 and MAS 200 can provide all the accounting and inventory software needed by a large organization.

One important aspect of running applications on your computer is that you will often have to update them. Software programs are rarely perfect. When users find bugs, they are reported to the software manufacturer, who issues patches or updates to make the code run better. The version number of the software you are running can indicate whether you have an old copy or the latest version. Often, the software itself will prompt you and ask if you want to update it. The Windows® operating system has automatic system updates to improve performance and security. Another important aspect of running applications is that you will often have many open at the same time. A handy little trick to navigate between them is pressing ALT-Tab on the keyboard. This will bring up a small window of all running applications and you can select which one you want to bring to the forefront of your monitor.

Collaborative applications are also an important and growing area of software development. One of the best examples of this is Google's Home & Office programs. These include the following free online applications that are easily shared and also able to be synched to all of your devices (so if you make an appointment in Google Calendar on your smartphone, you will also see it when you look at your desktop calendar):

Docs: Create and share your online documents, presentations and spreadsheets. http://docs.google.com/ (http://docs.google.com/) Calendar: Organize your schedule and share events with friends. http://www.google.com/calendar (http://www.google.com/calendar) Hangouts: IM and call your friends through your computer. http://www.google.com/hangouts/ (http://www.google.com/hangouts/) Sites: Create websites and secure group wikis. http://sites.google.com/ (http://sites.google.com/)

Other applications are vital to making sure your computer is working at an optimal level. For example, virus protection applications, which require a yearly subscription, prevent your computer from becoming infected (more on this topic later). McAfee® is one well-known company that offers virus protection software. Spyware is another type of threat from which you'll need protection. These are malicious programs, installed without your consent, that monitor your activity on the computer. This invasion of privacy is often done for marketing purposes. An example of an antispyware program is Spy Sweeper, developed by Webroot®. You can also get all-in-one computer protection like Norton™ 360, which has virus, spyware, browser, and firewall protection, as well as intrusion prevention and inbound and outbound email scanning.

A Look Further: Virus Protection

Every year, PC Magazine published its annual comparison of the best antivirus tools, including free and paid versions. You can read the results here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372364,00.asp (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372364,00.asp)

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 46/52

An architect uses a CAD application to create detailed plans for a house she is designing. CAD is widely used, from engineers building fighter jets to orthopedic surgeons modeling prosthetic limbs.

Iain Masterton/age fotostock/SuperStock

Computers are a visual medium, and a variety of specialized applications are designed to handle these functions. CAD (Computer Aided Design) is an example of this type of application. One of the best known is AutoCAD® by Autodesk®. This program can create detailed two- dimensional drawings for architects and engineers, and it also has sophisticated 3-D rendering capabilities to model real space and enable virtual walkthroughs of buildings before they are built (or machine parts or even the human body). For those interested in art, there are painting programs that enable you to paint without any of the mess. Windows® comes with a Paint program for rudimentary drawing functions, and you can purchase more sophisticated programs such as Photoshop® for painting and image enhancement.

The automobile is another place where computers will gain a greater foothold in the future. As Keith Barry observed in a 2010 article in Car and Driver, "Compared with the electronic wizardry found in our homes and offices, even the most advanced cars built today seem stuck in the Stone Age" (Barry, 2010). This is changing. Many cars now are connected to the Internet and by interfacing with the GPS, provide real-time information on traffic and other nearby attractions. The most sophisticated computer/car interaction is being worked on at Google. In attempting to create a self-driving car, they hope to develop personal transportation that reduces accidents, and also improves fuel efficiency (as well as letting everyone in the future have their own personal chauffer).

A Look Further: Self-Driving Car

You can read about the experience of one journalist riding in a Google self-driving car here: http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/17/autos/google-driverless-car/index.htm (http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/17/autos/google-driverless-car/index.htm)

Again, there is virtually no limit to the types of applications that can be installed on a computer. In the next few chapters, we will focus on some of the most important applications you may want to use for school and work, including Word, PowerPoint®, Excel®, and searching applications—the original killer apps. In a later chapter, we will cover Internet applications such as Second Life, email, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, LinkedIn®, and gaming applications.

Interviews from the Field: Interview with a Product and Application Support Administrator

What are your primary responsibilities?

To ensure that customers can receive technical support for proprietary applications in a timely, professional, and educational manner.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 47/52

What are the most important skills needed for your job?

Interacting with customers requires a communication skill set above all else. Additionally, the ability to listen and analyze data in a methodical and logical way are very important skills to have.

What do you like best about your job?

The feeling of leaving a customer satisfied with their technical support experience is what I like most about my job.

What got you interested in entering this field?

Support administration was a natural evolution from my previous role as a Technical Support Representative for a call center. I went from helping with all technical support inquiries to specializing in very specific applications that most valued customers interact with on a daily basis.

What is your educational background and how did it prepare you for your job?

I have a Bachelor of Science in Telecommunications, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA). My Bachelor of Science gave me the technical foundation on which all my jobs have built upon, and the MBA has given me the ability to translate facets of my career into business value.

Can you give an example of a project you are working on now?

Currently, I am working on revising our knowledge systems to make technical support data clearer, more concise, and most of all, easier to access. The end result will be a streamlined knowledge base that will aid in achieving higher customer satisfaction rates with all those that use our proprietary applications.

Apps

While on larger desktop computers, users perform tasks by running massive "programs" (examples here are Word and PowerPoint® for Windows® computers), on smartphones (both Apple® and Android™ systems) these programs are called "apps." A shortened term of the word "application," these are downloaded by the user at an "app store." Apple® users find apps at their App Store™. Android users access apps through Google Play. These apps come in a variety of genres including utilities (such as the Flashlight or a data usage monitor), games (such as Angry Birds™ or Words with Friends), social (Facebook and Twitter), productivity (such as word processing and spreadsheets), and entertainment (such as Pandora® and Netflix).

Questions to Consider

1. What is the difference between a utility, a driver, and an application? 2. Why are utilities important? 3. What can be found in the System Tools subfolder?

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 48/52

4. Why were screen savers developed? 5. What is a device driver? 6. What is a computer application? List some examples.

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 49/52

3.5 Open Source As mentioned in a previous section, Linux® is an open-source operating system. This is a very significant development in the history of computing that deserves to be covered in more detail. Specifically, open source means that the code for a piece of software is freely given out to anyone who wants it. For example, if you downloaded an open-source word processing application, you would get the program as well as the source code. If you are not a programmer, then you would have very little interest in the source code. If you had these skills, however, then the code might be very important to you because it gives you the power to change the program to meet your needs. By opening up source code to the entire world, organizations empower their programmers, allow users to modify and improve the software, and in the end a better product often results (Weber, 2004). We will see a variety of examples of open source in this book (Linux®, Open Office, Wikipedia), but in this section, we will explore some of the general ideas behind open source, as well as its main detractors. For more information, see the Open Source Initiative: http://www.opensource.org/ (http://www.opensource.org/) .

Why Is Open Source Important?

Its proponents argue that open source is important because the most innovative inspirations for the Internet, operating systems, and the software that runs on both have come from the open-source environment. This concept would have seemed counterintuitive to business leaders as recently as a couple of decades ago, when intellectual property was a secretive and closely guarded commodity. Although there are many who maintain this point of view, there is also a growing open-source movement that counters this assumption.

To understand open source, you need to know how it is different from the proprietary model, in which software is owned and controlled by its creator. In a traditional software environment, programming instructions are hidden from the user. If you tried to access them (and hackers can break into a program and do this), you would be guilty of a copyright violation. It is illegal to access, copy, modify, or share a piece of proprietary software that is sold for a profit. For example, if a friend wanted a copy of your Microsoft® Word application, you would be breaking the law if you let him copy it onto his computer. This is not the case with an open-source program.

The Beginnings of Open Source

Up until the 1980s, all software followed the proprietary model. Lots of people were copying or pirating software, but this was against the law. However, some people believed the proprietary model itself was wrong. They said that it deterred intellectual collaboration. They argued that software was an idea, and that preventing people from accessing that idea stifled its natural evolution and potential for growth and improvement. In an attempt to rectify this situation, in 1985, computer scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) established the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the General Public License (GPL).

Copyleft

Open source does have some guidelines associated with it, and the GPL has defined what they are (Dale & Lewis, 2010, p. 236). The FSF also began using a term called copyleft, which is what happens when a user modifies a program and passes along those modifications for free to a friend (notice how "copyleft" is a play on words of the term "copyright"). The motto of open-source proponents is that "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price." In other words, the FSF argues that we have the right to control the software we bring into our homes. They argue that this is very important because as our society becomes more reliant on computers for every

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 50/52

Computer developers are excited about Open Source technology in many African countries, using, modifying, and developing free software

aspect of our lives, we lose our freedom as a society if one or two giant organizations control our software. Peter T. Brown, a former executive director of the Free Software Foundation, said, "The free software movement is one of the most successful social movements to emerge in the past 25 years, driven by a worldwide community of ethical programmers dedicated to the cause of freedom and sharing" (http://www.fsf.org/about (http://www.fsf.org/about) ). Many in the business world realize this is a good way to improve their product and earn a profit. Today, some governments are coming on board with this idea, with Brazil, Thailand, Peru, and even China using the open-source model to develop software and standards.

Open-Source Opponents

Not everyone agrees with the open-source philosophy. Opponents believe that copyrighted materials and closed- source code protect the programmer, ensure profitability for the organization that takes the business risks to create the product, and ultimately produce a better experience for the user. Microsoft® is leading a charge against the open-source community, and while they do not want to completely eliminate the practice, they seek instead to limit it. Those who are in this camp support something known as Digital Rights Management or Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). This is the use of digital technologies to protect a variety of different types of intellectual property, which might include anything from personal letters to computer source code. These technologies prevent access to the content in a way that was not intended by the creator. For example, DRM is used within Microsoft® products so users cannot legally access its source code. When you purchase a copy of a Microsoft® product, in reality what you are doing is buying a license to it with rules governed by a contract called the End User License Agreement (EULA). This spells out the terms and restrictions placed upon you for using the license that you purchased (Savage & Vogel, 2009, p. 255). This tension between the open-source movement and the proprietary community is ongoing today.

Open Source Software

Open Source Software From Title:

Linking Africa: The Future Is Digital (https://fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx? wID=100753&xtid=48291)

© Infobase. All Rights Reserved. Length: 02:28   

 0:000:00 / 2:28 / 2:28 1x1x

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 51/52

in an open exchange with the global community. What implications could Open Source have for economic growth in the developing world?

In January 2012, Wikipedia blacked out their English language site for 24 hours in protest of the proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation. What do you think of Wikipedia's protest?

AP Photo/Wikipedia

SOPA and PIPA

Related to these issues are SOPA and PIPA, which have been in the news. Though they sound like they might be the names of twin daughters, in reality they have to do with the open-source world. SOPA is an acronym for the Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA is the Protect IP Act. These acts have attracted significant negative attention from major Web entities like Wikipedia. In January 2012, Wikipedia actually blacked out its site for an entire day to protest these acts. It literally went "dark" for 24 hours, and users in the United States could not access its information.

At the heart of the issue, these acts would enable the United States Department of Justice to block users from connecting to foreign Internet sites, which were accused of copyright infringement. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in December 2011, said, "It's nothing short of a bill to create a U.S. censorship regime, and it's moving fast" (Retman, 2011).

The problem was not the goal to stop copyright infringement. Though the bill's supporters said that they were essential to stop these "rogue" foreign websites, the opponents railed against the vague language of the proposed legislation. This imprecise language, according to SOPA and PIPA opponents, would "create devastating new tools for silencing legitimate speech all around the web" (Electronic Frontier Foundation, n.d.).

How might this happen? Wikipedia relies on user-generated content. If one of these users posted a link to a blacklisted site, then the Department of Justice would have the authority to shut Wikipedia down. Though Wikipedia theoretically has the resources to prevent this from happening, it could threaten to shut down smaller sites without the funds to protect themselves.

A Look Further: SOPA and PIPA Acts

Do you think these acts will help resolve copyright issues? Why or why not? What other possible solutions to prevent copyright infringement can you think of? If you want to track the progress of SOPA, visit this site: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3261 (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3261) To track the progress of PIPA, visit this site: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s968 (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s968)

Crowdsourcing

9/1/2021 Print

https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch02introduction,sec2.1,sec2.2,sec2.3,sec2.4,ch03introduction,sec3.1,sec3.2,sec3.3,sec3.4,sec3.5&co… 52/52

While the debate continues, the open-source philosophy is unquestionably growing stronger. This is exemplified by the increasing number of terms that are linked to the power of open source. Some have called it "mass collaboration," while others call it "crowdsourcing," where the power of the crowd drives the future of business (Howe, 2008). The idea is that sometimes the paid employee is not the best person for a job. Often, the individual who creates the best product is the one who is using it on a daily basis, and the best person to evaluate that effort is not a coworker, but friends who also use the product on a daily basis. The open-source movement is not restricted to the world of computing. It is the idea behind blogs (which we will discuss later) and the amateurs who write them for free, share their opinions, and report on the news. Crowdsourcing takes advantage of the power of a blogger's followers to further shape and understand the news. Further discussion of the open-source philosophy can be found in books such as We the Media, which explores grassroots open-source journalism (Gillmor, 2006); The Pirate's Dilemma, which considers how open-source and youth culture are reinventing capitalism (Mason, 2008); and The Wisdom of Crowds, which champions the problem-solving potential of large groups of people (Surowiecki, 2004). Or as the title of another book suggests, We are Smarter than Me (Libert & Spector, 2008). As you progress through this book, you will see how the open-source philosophy has been extended to encompass more than the source code created by computer programmers.

Questions to Consider

1. What is open source and why is it important? 2. How is open source different from proprietary software? 3. What is the importance of the Free Software Foundation? 4. What does copyleft mean? 5. Who are the open-source opponents, and what is their argument? 6. What do the acronyms DRM, EULA, SOPA and PIPA mean? Why are they important?