Digital Age: Digital Technology: Digital Information Processing

Digital Information Processing

• Overview: Today's children represent an entire generation that can't remember a time without compact discs or cellular phones; they have had constant access to powerful personal computers since before they could walk. Those of us who remember rotary telephones and IBM Selectric typewriters, however, know it wasn't always like this.
  
  Microprocessors are small, self-contained electronic circuits with large numbers of transistors (for digital calculation) connected by tiny wires that carry information at extremely high speeds. In 1971, Intel developed the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004. The arrival of microprocessors heralded the age of microcomputers, computers that could do the work of the giant, room-filling computers of the 1950s and 1960s while occupying a fraction of the physical space.

During the last few decades, Intel and other chip manufacturers continued to create faster, smaller microprocessors that computer makers used to take mainframes and desktop computers alike to new heights of computing power. You don’t have to look very far today to see the effect of technology and computers on modern society. Microprocessors are present in a considerable portion of the devices we use at work and at play. Everything from cellular and digital phones to automobiles and air conditioning units depend on computer chips to operate automatically and more efficiently (most of the time).

Computer manufacturers have scaled-down keyboards, color touch-screen displays, small but adequate supplies of internal memory, and the ability to share information with desktop and notebook PCs. Computer and electronics manufacturers have deduced that people may be just as willing to purchase a less-expensive Internet device that takes up less space.

A look at the history and evolution of computing technology very quickly gives one the impression that the only true constant is that computers change. The traditional standalone PC is rapidly going the way of the dinosaur; it is being replaced by PCs connected in various ways to form a world of computer networks. Palm-size PCs can do most anything that desktop PCs can do, including linking to standard PCs for data storage and synchronization and, in many cases, accessing the Internet.

More...............................  Silicon Dreams: The Past, Present & Future Of Computing In The Information Age