Topic 6 - The History of the Computer

Lecture

The lecture this week discussed the history of computers. The first computer was invented by Charles Babbage and since then the computer has become almoast a daily necessity for people. The first commercially produced computers available were manufactured by IBM in the 1950's, that were mainly for use in the military or government departments. Xerox PARC was then founded and produced the first PC called Altair. Shortly after Bill Gates founded Microsoft, after he wrote a language called BASIC for Altair. It was from here on that PC's became an industry in their own right.

Apple soon came on the scene, producing their own make of PC's that was more advanced than Altair and took over the market. IBM was still manufacturing computers meant for the workplace decided to break into the PC market by pairing up with Microsoft and building a new operating system to be used on PC's called Windows. Apple was unprepared for this market shift and soon their company began to slide, causing Microsoft to take over the industry. All this happened in the 1970's and 80's and it is only quite recently that Apple has made a comeback with their new imac range. There is still a healthy competition between Apple and Microsoft, yet as they are both popular operating systems, it seems they are doing all they can to make it easy for people to swap between the two.

Without delving too much more into the history of the computers, the lecture also dicussed the differences between the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW), that being that the internet is made up of lots of different applications including WWW and Email.

Readings

The reading this week is called "What's New About New Media?" Basically this article discusses how much digital media has progressed over time and how there is always new media available. For example, these days music is readily available to us. All we have to do is log onto iTunes and download the mp3 and its ours. However 50 years ago, the only way to hear music was on a record player, 20 years ago it was a cassette tape which morphed into a CD and now we have mp3's. It's pretty much revolutionised how we listen to music now. This is relevant to New Communication Technologies as the Internet is ever expanding and developing, becoming a form of new media.


Tutorial


This week we needed to find an article in Wikipedia on a topic that we were experts on. Now I had a hard time thinking of anything, since I don't think I'm that knowledgeable about any topics to call myself an expert. However I was watching FRIENDS on TV and realised I own the entire series on DVD and should at least be somewhat knowledgeable on the subject.


Is this article accurate?


The article was accurate, I found that most of the information about the television show FRIENDS was in fact correct and true. I didn't notice any outlandish statements or false rumours about the cast members that you so often find on the internet and in the tabloids


Does it cover all the basic facts that you'd need to understand the topic?


The article was pretty good, it included a lot of the information one needs to be able to understand what the TV series is about. My only problem with it is that it seems very rushed. I could see the article being confusing for people who didn't know the story or relationships between the characters. Even though it explained it, it was not written in a way that was easy to comprehend, it seemed more like it was trying to cram as much information as possible into a paragraph without any thought towards flow and language choices. Other than that though the article seemed accurate and informative.




Does the article cover Wikipedia guidelines for useful articles?


The article is useful, it has a lot of information on the show itself as well as information on each of the cast members other acting work. There are many references listed on the bottom of the Wikipedia page and all the edits that have been made to the information on the page appear to have been done with good intentions rather than to cause confusion.


Is this article fair and balanced or is it biased towards a particular side or argument?


It's hard to argue about a TV show. I don't think you can be necessarily biased one way or the other. The article was favourable about the television show as well as the actors and characters.


Changes I would make to the article would be maybe making the passages a little bit more coherent and maybe more detailed with the story line of the show. The article explains only the very basics of the relationships of the characters and their journeys. I would maybe just add more detail.