Week 2 Assignment - EDCI 601 Lawrence J. Flint

1. What is the history of the Internet? (Explain it the way you would to an audience who is attending your workshop on "The Introduction to the Use of the Internet".)

Contrary to the fact that Al Gore recently proclaimed that he was one of the original founders of the Internet, computers have been sharing data for over three decades. Early computer programmers recognized that computers could be linked together in order to share processing tasks, serve as local and wide area databases, and be used as a communication tool. The progress that has been made ever since the 1960s in terms of computer connectivity is outstanding.

The first computer network (known as ARPANET) was developed between the mid 1960s and the early 1970s. This was an experimental platform that showed the best way to transmit data over telephone lines was by sending and receiving it in "packets" rather than as streaming data. Once these few computers were networked, the task of writing useful software applications was undertaken. The year 1972 saw the first useful electronic mail application - a very important piece of software for the developers of this technology. Not only did e-mail serve as a communication tool for these developers, it also tested the very systems that the data was being transmitted on.

Although packet data transmission was shown to be the most efficient means of communication it still had some bugs that needed to be worked out. The main difficulty was that although one computer could send data without interruption, the receiving computer would not necessarily get all of the data due to some interruption or "noise." The solution to this was a protocol that allowed for a self-correcting behavior by the computers in order to receive data in its entirety. This was called the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).

The most beautiful standard that the early Internet designers came up with was the open architecture nature of the Internet. As long as computers could connect and share information, it didn't matter what the type of processor was that each computer used or the software applications that handled the data. This was a necessity in those days since there was such a variety of hardware and software designs. Today this allows the flexibility for DOS, Apple, Linux and UNIX systems to share and interpret data.

The early 1980s saw a boom in the number of computers that were connected. The Ethernet connection technology became a standard and more and more businesses and government agencies saw great benefit in being able to share data across great distances.

Scientists became much willing and able to share data between laboratories and the defense department saw it as a secure and easy way communicate necessary and sometimes confidential information. Our defense systems became synchronized and able to be controlled from central locations.

Another interesting feature of the Internet is that it is not controlled by any central agency or "main computer." Information is passed between computers through routers that relay data requests and support connections.

2. Discuss the commercialization of the technology.

Personal computer manufacturers such as IBM, Gateway, Dell, Apple, Compaq and others have profited greatly in the past few decades as sales of business and home use machines has skyrocketed. But the commercialization does not end there. Hardware manufacturers like Intel, Motorola, Seagate, and Conner, software companies such as Microsoft, Lotus, and Adobe and support companies like Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems and Novell have all played a major part in the development of the internet. It takes computing hardware, software, programmers, routers, Internet providers, and web masters to pull it all together.

The e-commerce marketplace has expanded over the past five years in ways that even the most liberal futurists never predicted five years ago. The value of the stock market has been driven in large part by the online businesses that have made fortunes very recently.

Many people find that the use of the Internet to purchase items is both flexible and economic. There are a host of specialty and general merchants that have many millions of items available for purchase at the click of a mouse. Online auction houses like eBay.com have also seen outstanding growth as they match buyers and sellers of collectibles, computers and general merchandise.

3. Address the history and the future of the Internet.

The Internet has the potential to shape our society in the future much more than it presently does. There has been a burgeoning of the e-commerce market and the volume of e-mails far exceeds the number of pieces of mail that the US Postal Service handles.

There seems to be a trend in communications technology toward a seamless integration of voice, fax, television, and data transmission. It is very possible that a single media connection can be made at each house that simultaneously carries all incoming and outgoing data from a household - computers, fax machines, telephones, televisions and the like will all be used simultaneously with little limit as to transmission quality or bandwidth.

Our schools can benefit greatly from this increase in technological development. The typical classroom teacher will have an even greater responsibility in the future to incorporate these technologies in the classroom learning environment.

4. Discuss the history of computers.

The basic function of our modern computer is the same as the abacus of ancient times - performing calculations. With an ever more complicated society and the need for faster, more reliable means to calculate numbers and transfer data came the development of the modern computer as we know it today.

The Apollo spacecraft that successfully carried American astronauts to the moon and back was controlled in large part by a computer that had little power than the current Furby toy. At the time, the flight control computers designed to allow safe travel to another world was an engineering and programming marvel. Today this masterpiece pales in comparison to the Furby and other small, inexpensive

The Space Shuttle orbiter has five onboard computers that are just slightly more powerful than some handheld calculators available for $100 and the Hubble Space Telescope was outfitted with a 286 - based processor - a snail as compared to the processing power available in consumer desktop computers.

5. What are the five generations of computers? Write a brief note on each generation of computer.

The fundamental task of a computer is to perform numerical calculations and logic functions. The first generation of computers was designed to meet the first of these tasks. Although very large, power consuming, slow and difficult to operate, the first computers basically did the same thing that all modern computers do today - crunch numbers.

Many first generation computers were designed to do a specific task. The government commissioned many of these machines to break secret codes, calculate missile and ordinance trajectories for the military and perform repeated calculations that take humans much longer to do. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first general-purpose computer. A successor to the ENIAC was the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) built in 1945. It was the first computer to have a stored memory - that is it could pause a calculation and then be restarted from where it left off.

The second-generation computer came about as the result of the invention of the transistor. The vacuum tubes that earlier computers utilized quickly became obsolete as these smaller, sturdier, more energy efficient components came on the scene. This generation saw the invention of the magnetic storage device (disk drive) and some powerful and flexible computer languages that are still in use today (COBAL and FORTRAN). International Business Machines (IBM) was became a powerhouse in the computer hardware industry.

In 1958 the integrated circuit (IC) was invented. This component beckoned the third generation of computing machinery. The "microchip," as it is now called, was a key development in computing hardware and the concept of operating system software was introduced. Operating systems (like our modern MS DOS, and the Apple OS) were designated to keep the computer operating properly while allowing a host of specialized applications to be run.

The current computer of this fourth generation utilizes the very technology that was developed in the 1950s and 1960s. The only difference in terms of architecture is the fact that engineers have been able to squeeze more and more of these circuits into smaller and smaller spaces, allowing for faster and more powerful computers. The amount of memory and storage space that computers have has grown exponentially in this time as well. The cost has also dropped dramatically as compared to the amount of computing power that each dollar buys.

The next generation is just around the corner. Parallel processing, supercomputers on the desktop, and quantum computing is not science fiction any more. Computers are sharing information at a much faster pace and are much more interactive with the humans that operate them.

6. What is WWW?

Most people think that the Internet is the same as the World Wide Web (WWW). This is far from the case. The WWW is a standard that is commonly realized in "web pages" that are written in a language called the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) that is interpreted by browsers such as Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The WWW is a powerful research, entertainment and commerce tool that has permitted many people to expand their horizons in terms of information retrieval and sharing. Never before have people, government agencies, schools and commerce been so closely linked. The exponential growth of the number of WWW sites and people accessing the WWW has given a new meaning to the term "global community."

7. Describe the development of WWW from the Internet.

The World Wide Web (WWW) is just part of the many types of communication that is permitted over the Internet. The early days of the Internet saw such other applications and transfer protocols such as Gopher, Bitnet, Usenet and e-mail. Only in the past ten years has the WWW become such a commonplace item on the "information superhighway." The WWW was established in order to meet an increasing demand for communication among non-technical people. It has opened doors for research, commerce and entertainment that were never before attainable over the Internet.

The 1984 introduction of the Domain Name Server (DNS) made the names of all computers easier to remember and work with. The familiar .com, .net, .gov, .edu and others are products of this innovation. The HTML was chosen as the language of data transmission and evolves today.

8. Have you used these technologies i.e. the Internet, WWW, and computers for either teaching and/or learning purposes? If yes, write a brief note on how you have used them.

I regularly incorporate the Internet into the two courses that I teach. I maintain a web site for my students that allows them to see the class schedule, syllabus, assignments, current and previous marking period grades, information about me and links to other web sites that are related to the course work. The web site is also a jumping off point for all science students to do research since I provide links for all science and mathematics disciplines.

Students are encouraged to seek out assistance on the Internet and share web sites that we have found with the rest of the class. I plan to require my physics students to design a web site at the end of the year which will be serve as the culmination of a project that each will undertake to study "The Physics of..." their favorite sport or hobby.

The classroom that I teach in is outfitted with a computer that has access to the Internet. The expectation is that the room will have a complement of seven by next year.

We utilize PASCO scientific data retrieval and analysis equipment that interfaces with the computer. This permits both physics and chemistry students to take real time data with great accuracy and precision. The data analysis is done on the computers. As years pass more and more probes, interfaces and software will be added to the inventory.