Skills: none Concepts: technology refinement versus technology shift, progress in processing and memory, storage, and communication technology, pre-electronic computers This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Technology progress
Where does this topic fit? Internet concepts – Applications – Technology – Implications Internet skills – Application development – Content creation – User skills
Information technologies Processing and memory Storage Communication
Technology refinement and technology shifts
Technology refinement 1905
Technology refinement 1903 First flight
Technology shift
Storage progress 960 bits274,877,906,944 bits Shift or refinement?
Storage technology shift From punch cards to magnetic recording
million 6-bit characters 50 two-foot-diameter disks billion 8-bit bytes 1.8 inch disk Technology improvement – magnetic storage Shift or refinement?
Storage technology shifts
Four ways to store bits – storage technology shifts
Processing and memory progress 8 on/off switches 2 billion on/off switches Shift or refinement?
Communication progress 100 bits per second 40 billion bits per second
Progress enables new data types Data typeDecade Numeric1950s Alphanumeric1960s Text1970s Image1990s Speech2000s Music2000s Video2000s HD video2010s
Charles Babbage IBM 602Vannevar Bush Atansoff-Berry Before the programmable, electronic computer
The bottom line
Summary
Self-study questions 1.We looked at information storage, processing and communication technology. What other technologies are undergoing dramatic improvement? 2.If the first cars got only 1 mile per gallon, and that doubled every two years, what would our mileage have been 20 years later? Thirty years later? 3.What have been some of the applications made possible by improved IT in the last five years? 4.What have been some of the implications of IT progress for individuals? 5.What have been some of the implications of IT progress for organizations? 6.What have been some of the implications of IT progress for society? 7.What sorts of changes might you see during your lifetime?
Resources Ray Kurzweil is controversial and very optimistic about the technology progress (IT and other) and its implications for the future: There is much more on Kurzweil’s Web site: Gordon Moore published a widely quoted article predicting that the number of transistors on an economically feasible integrated chip would double every months. This is called “Moore’s Law:” ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles- Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles- Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf For more on Moore’s Law, see: Wolfram Alpha Moore’s law calculator: A short article on the discovery of the transistor: New York Times article on an early demonstration of television: TV-NYT-8apr27.htmhttp:// TV-NYT-8apr27.htm Video of Ivan Sutherland demonstrating Sketchpad: Two videos on the first transistor and the way transistors work: