Nils' Niche: The Enlightening Lecture aka Computer History (Week 2)

http://www.maniacworld.com/bill-gates-in-3d.gif

Wow, talk about ignorance on my behalf. I have never been especially good with computers and certainly had no idea about its history for that matter. Although, it really is much more lengthy and complex than I had previously given it credit for.

The fact that we have gone from Charles Babbage’s mechanical adding machine in the early 19th century to Alan Turing’s first working computer ‘the bombe’ used in world war 2, to today’s advancing technology really is mind boggling. I think we have a lot of things that we take for granted in regards to our computers like instant access to email, the internet and cyber space, which has become an ‘imagine zone’, used for communication of knowledge with people’s huge investment of emotions and feelings. I mean just take Facebook as an example. I know a lot of people that practically live in that place, telling the world what’s on their mind continuously throughout the day, even if they have absolutely nothing to say what-so-ever.
I didn’t even realise that the World Wide Web and the internet are not the same thing. The World Wide Web is only one part of the broader internet, sort of like a slice of pie compared to the pie as a whole. I told one of my mates about this newly acquired and enlightening piece of information and he looked at me with his eyes screaming douche bag and his mouth kindly saying, you’re a bloody idiot!

It was as far back as the 1970’s that computers really took off though with accountants using them for storing their numbers. I guess it was a perfect apparatus for bookies too.
It was amusing to hear how massive the first apple computer was and how it was sold for the devils number $666.60, do these digits represent an underlying message perhaps? It's hard to tell. What isn't hard to tell though is that Bill Gates is one smart yet ruthless nerd indeed, although I guess he had to be in order to be where he is today. He was the first person to charge people for his Microsoft software and in turn became the billion dollar man.
All in all it has been a productive and insightful week so in the great words of Forrest Gump: ‘That’s all I have to say about that.’