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By Mitch Jacovetty
You reach for the power button on your computer and press it. A circuit is suddenly
completed, and electricity floods across the insides of your PC.
Tiny microprocessors embedded in the motherboard suddenly awaken as a stream of data
shoots in from the hard drive. Nanoseconds later, a digitalized stream of 1s and 0s are fired
through a cable hooked into the motherboard, giving the exact specification of the color
each pixel in your monitor should be. A minute later, you're looking at your typical logon
screen.
Welcome to the wonderful world of computers.
Computing History
As late as the 1990s, computers were drastically different from those today. Let's say
you sat down at a computer console in the middle of the DOS era. C:/ would quickly appear
on the screen. You had three options: You could type an application name (C:/mword.exe),
you could type a DOS command (C:/net user), or you could type a file name
(C:/my_documents/computer_report.doc).
DOS stands for Disk Operating System, the name signifying that the software was
stored on a hard disk: An entirely new concept back then. Before, the only software was
outlined on a circuit board without a mouse or monitor. The prime method of storage in the
DOS days was the floppy drive; although manufacturers quickly started putting cases around
the contents, the name “floppy” stuck. The main drawback to the floppy disk was that it
stored data using a magnetic film, and that a stronger magnet could easily wipe the disk.
This is a problem that today's flash memory shares. CDs, which were impervious to magnets,
replaced floppies around the turn of the century, and today some people don't even know
what floppy disks are.
Memory was much more expensive in those days, and this nearly caused a
catastrophe in 1999. Computers always stored years as, for example, 97 instead of 1997,
and programs were instructed to read the date as if it had a 19 at the beginning. However,
people suddenly realized the year 2000 would be interpreted as 1900, causing mass
pandemonium. The electricity companies would think no one had paid for hundreds of years,
prison computers would see that no one should be left inside the prison, and some
computers would just be confused, and go berserk. Luckily, in part that some of the fears
were unfounded, and in part that companies spent hundreds of dollars to fix the problem,
nothing major happened, and Y2K went down as one of the biggest panics of the century.
However, it just shows that computers can always be improved upon, and that there's no
telling what kind of computers we'll see in the future....