Computers In The Society
Computers and Society:Introduction
The first modern digital computers were developed in the 1940s for military purposes that arose during World War II. These computers filled entire rooms, and at rates of a few thousand calculations per second, they took hours to perform complex mathematical operations. In the 1970s, the first personal computers were sold. Fitting on a desktop, they were exponentially faster and more powerful than the computers that had once filled large rooms. They were also affordable to individual consumers, making it possible for many people to use them for personal, business, and academic needs. By the mid-1990s, laptop computers capable of millions of calculations per second had been developed. Currently, nearly half of American homes have a personal computer, and businesses have come to rely on computers for nearly every function. Futurists prognosticate that computers will continue to become smaller and more powerful and that they will be used in almost every facet of people’s lives.
Among those who are excited and optimistic about the changes that computers will bring in the near future is Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, which produces much of the software that runs business and personal computers. According to Gates, now that computers are small, powerful, cheap, and affect every part of our lives, the next step will be the formation of a network connecting all of these computers to each other. On this network, which some people are calling the information highway, “computers will join together to communicate with us and for us,” Gates predicts. The changes to society will be as revolutionary as those of the Industrial Age and the Renaissance, he believes. Not only will people shop and conduct business through their computers, he says, but they will also engage in every type of human activity, from reading to simply hanging out with friends. In Gates’s vision, the increased level of communication made possible by computer...
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