Chapter 9

Computers are everywhere!

Did we mention earlier that “Need is the mother

of every invention.”?

In the ENIAC module, we discussed the need

behind the Difference Engine and the Analyt-

ical Engine: the need of a tool to detect the

errors in tables of data.

We also discussed the reason why ENIAC got

funded and built, because of the need of a fast

tool that can calculate the trajectory for the

new guns that we desperately needed to win

the War.

Some of the other early needs include breaking

code, also serving the war effort.

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This is also true today.

For most of us, the only reason that we want

to spend money, although less and less, to get

a computer is because it is useful.

Fortunately, a computer now can do lots of

things for us, by running many applications,

starting with the old ones, such as word pro-

cessing, spreadsheet, powerpoint, to entertain-

ing software, i.e., all kinds of games, to social

networking, such as all sorts of web based so-

cial network, mySpace, facebook, where you

connect to a fixed group of social friends, to

Chatroulette, where you will talk to a randomly

picked person.

What is going to be the next computer based

socializing model?

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A sample Chatroulette session

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The other side of the coin

It is reported in WSJ, Friday, May 21, 2010,

that several social networking sites, such as

Facebook, MySpace, had been sending per-

sonal data to advertising companies that could

be used to find customer’s names and other

personal information, despite the fact that they

promised that they would not share such infor-

mation w/o consent.

Thus, a natural question arises: Should we

trust these networks with our personal infor-

mation?

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What’s around us?

We need to deal with computers every where.

• ID card: Image as output

• Citizen’s bank: specific computer

• The Library: general purpose computer

• WalMart: Barcode as input

• Weather prediction: scientific data process-

ing

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Business

To begin with, in the business world today,

computers and the software applications that

run on them basically control a well organized

business. Every major company is equipped

with a computer, or network that connects

through different branches throughout the firm.

For lots of business, data is everything. It is

very boring and error prone for human beings

to manage the data. On the other hand, com-

puter can do things very fast, and can keep

lots of data. Moreover, it never got bored or

impatient. Thus, it fits here perfectly.

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An example

A manager of a supermarket can use a data

warehouse, which keep sales and inventories

data from various stores in the last 10 years,

taken from various stores at various times, per-

haps updated once a day.

With such data, a manage can enter a com-

plicate query, e.g., “During the winter months

of the last five years, what is the percentage

of customers in the Northeast urban supermar-

kets who bought crackers while buying soup?”

A manager can also use warehouse data to dis-

cover relationships that might influence enter-

prise strategy.

For example, “Are there any interesting pur-

chasing patterns of our customers?”

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Data mining

Instead of asking for specific information, data

mining technology tries to discover some knowl-

edge in a general nature. It is complicated, but

sometimes leads to nice results.

For example, a convenience store used the above

query and found out that in the early evenings,

a high percentage of male customers who bought

diapers also bought beers.

Questions: What should we do?

An answer: Put beers next to the diapers as

shown in the following figure.

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Education

Besides the normal application of computers

in running school and college administrations,

such as storing various records, and course reg-

istration, the every growing computer power

enables a much wide spread of knowledge across

the board. A shining example is that most of

the courses offered at MIT have become avail-

able via WEB.

The web technology also enables distance learn-

ing based education such as Univ. of Phoenix,

which allows you to “learn almost anywhere,

at any time.”, which certainly provides lots of

people with additional opportunities.

The UC system has also started to explore se-

riously the possibility to offer long distance ed-

ucation as a way to increase revenue.

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Another aspect

Traditionally, education is rather weak in devel-

oping countries, because of lack of revenue, re-

source, facilities and qualified educators. Com-

puters and Internet can certainly play a big part

in this front.

Various computer based learning programs have

also been developed to help use to learn, e.g.,

foreign languages.

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Engineering

Computers have also found a wide range of

applications in the very practical engineering

fields. One example is the robot based assem-

bly lines in car factories.

Boeing 777 was the first commercial aircraft

to be designed entirely on computer.

All the drawings were created on a 3D com-

puter aided design software system, which al-

lowed a virtual plane to be assembled, in simu-

lation, to check for interferences and to verify

proper fit of the many thousands of parts, thus

reducing costly rework.

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Entertainment

The fascinating CG (computer graphics) is re-

ally what the Pixar is based on to make such

movies as “Toy Stories”, “A Bug’s life”, “Find-

ing Nemo”, “Ratatouille”, etc..

For example, “Kongfu Panda”, made by Dream-

Works in 2008, is equally digital and fasci-

nating, where the computer animation used

throughout the film was more complex than

anything DreamWorks had done before.

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Some examples

The Crane in the movie has 6,109 pieces of

feathers, and the Snake has 120 pieces of bones.

When the turtle was turning into a saint, 37,517

pieces of peach flowers fell.

It is indeed a very beautiful scene, but it took

the team over six months to complete this

scene of about 40 seconds.

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Many other movies, although not entirely dig-

ital, also contain CG sequence to save money.

For example, in the film “Gladiator”, the Ro-

man Coliseum was brought to life with special

effects powered by Platform’s LSF Technol-

ogy.

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e-Books

There used to be lots of video rental stores

around the corner. Now most of them are out,

including Blockbuster, largely due to the fact

that people simply choose to download the dig-

ital versions of movies, legally or not, via the

Internet, which changes the way we do busi-

ness.

Now, books are doing the same, thanks to such

devices as Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad.

As a result, the sales of physical books was

done 1% in 2009 and might come further down

5% this year, that of e-books went up 99% in

2009 and might go up another 190% this year.

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Implications

Such a development not only will certainly change

our habit. If you like a book, you can down-

load it via wireless connection, at a lower price,

between $9.99 and $14.99.

Question: Do you like hold a physical book in

your hand, or read it in computer or a personal

reader?

On the other hand, this will also change our

culture, as it will drive many books stores such

as Border and Barnes and Nobel out of busi-

ness. For example, Borders same-store sales

came down 14% in the second quarter of 2010,

and had to lay off 884 people.

Borders used to operate 1,200 stores in 1992,

now only 175. It announced during this sum-

mer that it was close all of them by late Septem-

ber.

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Medicine

Computers have not only been introduced to

keep various records, they are also used in help

the doctors in diagnosing disease.

For example, Robotic surgery has also become

a reality.

A computer aided robot can do a sophisticated

surgery as controlled by a surgeon who is lo-

cated thousands of miles away from the oper-

ating room.

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Other stuff

We certainly should not overlook the computer

based imaging technology, such as CT, MRI,

PET, EKG, etc., that help the physicians to

have a direct visual observation of the suspi-

cious area before a final diagnosis can be made.

Computers also greatly speed up the process

of finding new medicines to cure diseases such

as cancer by making the screening process au-

tomatic.

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Activities

1. Each individual finds out at least five appli-

cations of computers that you believe are

the most interesting and/or important.

2. Write about those five applications: what

is it? what does it do? who, or which

company brought it up? how much does it

cost? why do think it is interesting and or

important? what, if any, improvement do

you want to see? etc.

3. Come up with a list of three applications

that you want to have, and write about it:

what do you want it to do? why do you

want to have it? do you think there will be

a market for it? what kind of knowledge

do you think the programmer should have

to come up with such a product.

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