NATS 1700 Lecture Notes - Intel 4004, Socalled, Misys
13 Oct 2012
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Introduction (c) z. stachniak, 2011 informal and unedited notes, not for distribution. When we re ect upon the impact of technology on society, computer and information technologies represent canonical examples. Yet, no singular technological invention or event, no matter how ground- breaking, can account for the creation of the digital electronic computer. Similarly, no digital computer, no matter how powerful or versatile, can sin- gularly explain the rapid transition of our civilization into that of consumers of digital information. In- deed, no invention occurs without such a context created in part by a chain of earlier discoveries, inventions, or contributions, sometimes centuries in the making. Computing is a canonical example of the continuous interaction between inventing and the forces of cultural, social, economic, technological, and po- litical change. The development of complex social interactions in areas such as early trade and commerce required numbers for representing quantities, and counting to perform operations on numbers such as addition.
