Background to the Computer Technology That We See All Around Us Today

 From the beginning of time, man realised that he necessary to take stock of his possessions in order to make informed decisions and be in manage of his environment.  His possessions had been not many, a few goats or sheep, a dog, two spears and an axe, perhaps a few wives and an growing quantity of youngsters. Now the only computing equipment at his disposal then was his ten fingers and ten toes, but the word ten, or 1, did not exist in his vocabulary.  He would allocate 1 finger to each goat, 1 to each and every rabbit he caught, and so on. Now, the fingers and toes allocated to the rabbits and goats were hassle-free to deal with but had their own problems simply because it was challenging to remember which fingers or toes had been applied to represent one thing, and which ones were still unallocated.

And as the number of goats increased beyond his ten fingers and his ten toes, he identified himself in a severe computational dilemma. Computer folks currently call this an overflow - memory size exceeded. Our resourceful ancient ancestor immediately found a way around this situation by resorting to the use of sticks and stones to extend the capacity of his computing system. That turned out to be a stroke of genius due to the fact that is when rules governing addition and subtraction of digits became clearly defined. When a new goat is born, put one even more stone to the pile of stones, when a new lamb is born, put 1 additional stick to the pile of sticks. When the ancestor, or a jackal, ate one sheep he removed 1 stick and when he decided to eat all his goats, he would throw away all his stones soon after eating, not before, to prevent confusion. Absolutely nothing could be additional elegant. A lot later, mathematicians discovered that they could also use this process and referred to as it addition and subtraction.

These sticks and stones form the developing blocks of a computer system as we know it currently. The similar sticks and stones that our ancestors utilized various thousands of years ago are nonetheless there, miniaturised and disguised as integrated circuits, inside the contemporary computer system. Our ancient man, who employed to shuffle his sticks and stones as he carried out his calculations, is also nonetheless there inside the modern day computer, decreased to some operating technique and application software.
So genuinely, nothing considerably has changed considering that the beginning of time, except of course the reality that whereas the sticks and stones technology was readily available for zero cost, contemporary technology, like every little thing else, is not so free. My next few articles will trace the stages in personal computer technology development from the Stone Age to the present.

Meanwhile, you can pay a visit to this to see what the present holds for you.