Ch 10 Computers

CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite demonstrates a computer of the future, connected to a global library, in 1967. (Library of Congress).

Standard histories of mass media ignore the impact of computers, despite their effects on traditional media and the way they  opened new kinds of media.

One of the earliest examples of effects on mass media came in November of 1952, when CBS news worked with Univac computer manufacturer Sperry-Rand to help project the winner of the presidential election on election night. The prediction was based on  voting patterns in previous elections, and the computer compared those to incoming returns from representative precincts. We now know that this sampling technique can be quite accurate, but that election night in 1952,  the Univac projected an unexpected landslide  for Dwight Eisenhower with 438 electoral votes against his opponent, Adlai Stevenson, with 93 electoral votes.  (The official count would turn out to be 442 and 89 electoral votes.)

The landslide projection baffled the CBS network news team and the computer programmers.   Although Eisenhower was the odds-on favorite to win, the race was expected to be much closer.   The CBS news producers and the programmers mistakenly thought the Univac  data was so out of line with other predictions that they did not report it. Instead they claimed that they had some kind of computer malfunction.

The next morning, reviewers found it charming that computers had such a hard time replacing humans. “The CBS pride was called the Univac, which at a critical moment refused to work with anything like the efficiency of a human being,” TV reviewer Jack Gould wrote in The New York Times. “This mishap caused the CBS stars, Walter Cronkite, Ed Murrow and Eric Sevareid to give Univac a rough ride for the rest of the evening, in a most amusing sidelight to the CBS coverage.”

Yet, according to the National Academy of Engineering, the Univac programmers grew nervous and changed the parameters to produce a different result. “They later confessed that the initial projection of electoral votes had been right on the mark,” the NAE said.

In reality, computing had worked with far more than the efficiency of a human being.

Discussion questions

  1. Curves in the road: Did Microsoft  really get away with highway robbery when it licensed its operating system to IBM?  And how about Apple and Xerox?
  2. Moore’s Law:  What is it and does it still apply?
  3. Computing and the media — At first it was charming, and kind of funny that computers were threatening to replace humans. But digital media replaced the old media structure. How did that happen? What were some of the forces at work?
  4. Straights, nerds and hips — Robert X. Cringley says there were three types of computer programmers and developers: the straight “lumpen” programmers (working for IBM);  the nerds (working for Microsoft);  and the hips (working for Apple). Which group contributed the most? Which group had the most fun? Which group is on top today?

People & Events

Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Herman Hollerith, Grace Hopper, Vannevar Bush, William Shockley, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Englebart, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates

Documentary Videos

  1. Triumph of the Nerds Part I, Part II, and Part III. Also, PBS Website. There are two Nerds series with a total of six two-hour episodes (The second one is about networks, and its listed under Chapter 11 on this site). Most of the major figures in computing and network history are profiled in the Nerds series. There’s also an interesting  personal narrative by Robert X. Cringely.
  2. Interview with Bill Gates, Sept. 2013, in which he describes the famous “control-alt-delete” function as “a mistake.” CNET article Sept. 26, 2013.
  3. Doron Swade displays Babbage’s difference engine in this 2008 Wired video.  Also, Nathan Myhrvold & Doron Swade discuss Babbage’s difference engine.
  4. Codebreakers:  Bletchley Park — An in-depth tour of the famed first computer center at Bletchley Park, where World War II Enigma signals were intercepted and decoded.
  5. Codebreaker  — a 2011 documentary — tells the story of Alan Turing, whose World War II codebreaking helped save millions of  lives.   In 1954, Turing committed suicide at age 41 after problems with the law and prejudice against gay men.  
  6. Touring Bletchley Park – Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug, 2012.
  7. Mavis Batey, Bletchley park maven, Washington Post, Nov 2013.
  8. The mother of all computer demos — Doug Englebart (January 30, 1925 – July 2, 2013) gave this demo of the interactive mouse-driven computer of the future on Dec. 8, 1968.
  9. Apple Mac “1984″ ad — YouTube link often breaks, but if this doesnt work, the ad is frequently uploaded and can be found with a search.
  10. Long lost 1980s video of Steve Wozniak leading the Denver Apple Pi club in a spoof pledge of allegiance.  Other Wozniak videos were uncovered in 2013, such as this one describing college pranks by the Woz.  This just shows that early programmers and developers had a lot of fun.  Randy Wiggington of Apple talked about the near-disaster surrounding the launch of the Mac. 
  11. Silicon & Charybdis, a brief history of computing through the lens of Marshall McLuhan

Origins of computing

  1. The first computer was actually designed in the 1830s – The Analytical Engine
  2. Z3: Germany’s WWII digital computer.
  3. Colossus: The secrets of UK’s Bletchley Park’s code-breaking computers, by Jack Copeland.
  4. The transistor
  5. ENIAC – The press conference that changed the world, by Dianne Martin, GWU.
  6. Finding the women who programmed the world’s first electronic computer. PRI. Although, actually, it was not the first.
  7. Vannevar Bush, “As we may think,”  1945, and Brewster Kahle’s 2019 take.    “Consider a future device,” Bush said,  “…  in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”

General histories of computing

  1. History of computing,  assembled by Mike Muuss, with an emphasis on ENIAC and the US Army. Site has a wealth of information and is well worth exploring despite a somewhat limited design style.
  2. Turing computers involved in secret war efforts revealed
  3. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
  4. Kruchev visits IBM — strange tale of silicon valley history from 1959.  Fast Company, Oct. 2014.c c
  5. Visual history of video game consoles — Showing about a dozen of the 300 systems that have been marketed since 1975.
  6. The dawn and dusk of Sun Microsystems
  7. Snopes.com explains the computer of the future controversy.
  8. We owe it to the hippies — Forget antiwar protests, Woodstock, even long hair, says Stewart Brand. The real legacy of the sixties generation is the computer revolution.
  9. America’s genius lies in its’ respect for rebellion
  10. The international language of science used to be Latin. Now it is Scientific Linnux (one moment for redirect).   Chicago Trib, Oct. 28, 2013.
  11. Obituary for William C. Lowe, IBM vp who headed personal computer division.  NY Times  Oct. 30, 2013.
  12. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and … Morris Tanenbaum?  Inventor of silicon transistor, Newark NJ Star-Ledger, Nov 10, 2013.
  13. Happy birthday, Moore’s Law – by Robert Samuelson, April 19, 2015.
  14. What is code? by Paul Ford, Bloomberg, June 2015 –  An excellent overview of the history and development of computer code.
  15. Apple doesnt want to pay its taxes, Intercept Aug 16 2016
  16. History of video games, Library of Congress, 2014
  17. Early video games, The Conversation, 2021
  18. VG Venture Capital as a major factor in the rise of silicon valley
  19. Cronkite – Home info system of 2000 How does the prediction compare to now?

Current Issues

  1. Right to repair – should purchasing a product mean you’re locked into Apple’s ecosystem?
  2. Is Apple Ethical?
  3. Computer, cell phone suppliers and ethical issues – Foxxconn Factories manufactured an estimated 40% of all consumer electronics sold worldwide in 2012. Poor working conditions and suicides abound. What should be done?
  4. Apple and Foxconn Wiki
  5. Apple and Google have a stranglehold on the app market. Is that a good thing?
  6. Can you become so famous and influential that the narrative is still controlled by you after your death? Laurene Powell Jobs is trying to do that for Steve Jobs.

Computer Frontiers

  1. AI changes everything.
  2. It seems almost human.
  3. But – Can AI ever be sentient? Can it protect us from ourselves?
  4. How would Plato harness Chat GPT?
  5. What are the limitations of Chat GPT?
  6. How intelligent is Chat GPT? Will it always need a human?
  7. Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google Assistant had a decade’s head start. How did they lose the race to Chat GPT?
  8. Could Chat GPT’s output be libelous?
  9. Basic Tutorial on Chat GPT
  10. With one hand tied behind their back, can China compete with Chat GPT?
  11. The next revolution – Quantum Computing

Human Enhancement

AI TOOLS

  1. Merlin – Chrome Extension integrating Chat GPT
  2. AI generated video – Text+image to video, animation stylization, storyboarding, masking, rendering, customization
  3. DALL-E 2 – AI that draws pictures in the art style you want based on your description
  4. Synthesia – AI generated video and voice for business presentations
  5. Descript – AI that clones your voice, allows you to edit narration through a doc, and assemble presentations with visuals
  6. Midjourney – Another option for AI art
  7. CapCut – Use AI to enhance your videos