History of Computing Timelines - Essay Example

History of Computing History of Computing Timelines IBM and the Holocaust: This is a book written by Black that talks about the business dealings of IBM and the Nazi regime of Germany where the Nazi used IBM punch card technology during the 1930’s and the next period of the second world war so as to get the details of all the non Germans living in Germany where millions were murdered in Europe. From counterculture to cyber culture: This is a book written by Turner that describes the communication networks and digital utopianism. It also goes ahead to talk about the whole Earth network and the politics involved of Information Technology. The timelines of the occurrence of all these events is as described below: From 1880 to 1884: According to Black, Herman Hollerith, an employee at the US census bureau got the idea and founded a punch card technology back then that was used to store information about people living in Germany. That is, perforated readable cards that could store details of each and every person such as names, gender, nationality and occupation (Black, 2001, p. 25). This was the year when the prototype was built of a counting machine that could store and use the data collected and stored in the punch cards. 1879 to 1890: Hollerith accepted to join the U.S. Census Bureau as an assistant. When the first contest by the Census Bureau is conducted, the counting machine technology developed by Hollerith became the hero and won. 1910 to 1923: This was when the US consensus changed and they stopped using Hollerith technology as it had some downfalls such as slow in speed and it was too expensive to maintain. The same year, Hollerith sold out his patented design technology to a salesman, Willy Heidinger, from a German established business company called Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (German Hollerith Machine Corporation) or Dehomag. Hollerith sells his remaining shares of his business to Charles Flint for $1.41 million. There occurred an inflation that caused Dehomag from German to delay payments on their scheduled royalty. 1924 to 1933: Watson Thomas, a businessman propelled by Flint assumed the role of CEO of CTR and renamed Dehomag to International Business Machines (IBM) (Black, 2001, p. 44). January was the month when Hitler came to power and made a promise to create a Master Race, dominate Europe, and decimate European Jewry (Black, 2001, p. 44). IBM strategic alliance with Nazi Germany. In March, Hitler established a concentration camp whose inhabitants were political prisoners in Dachau, ten kilometers north of Munich. Willy Heidinger controlled 90% of Dehomag. In April there was a delayed consensus as Dehomag assisted the German Nazi government in ethnic identification. In October: Watson supports the move and travels to Germany where capital is also invested to precede with the Nazi project. An IBM factory in Germany was also built and the second important customer of IBM became the Germans, the first being America. The IBM design finally helps the Germans to isolate the ethnic minorities. 1934 to 1935: Karl Keller a statistician stated that geological tracing technology would eventually discover all the Jews. Writing in Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv, Keller assured, "The determination of Jewish descent will not be difficult because membership in the Jewish faith and membership in the Jewish culture were nearly identical before the emancipation of the Jews. It is therefore sufficient to check the change of de- nominations in church registers and registry offices for the last 130 years" (Black, 2001, p. 103). In September, Hitler demanded the implementation of the “Law for the protection of German blood” that deprived Jews of German citizenship. 1939 to 1960: German consensus conducted again. In October, the second Jewish consensus was taken again. IBM technology of paper forms, punch cards, and tabulators were used in the camps. According to Turner, Computers were thought of as tools and emblems of the same unfeeling industrial-era social machine whose collapse was welcomed (Turner, 2006, p. 2). 1964 to 1979: Students march terming politicians for calling and treating them like abstract data. They took up the blank computer cards and punched them with patterns of holes written FSM and STRIKE (Turner, 2006, p. 2). Young people set out to establish communes, many in the mountains and the woods. 1968 to 1985: Brand gathers members to write a catalog called the Whole Earth Catalog. Computers became smaller and more interconnected, and as corporations began to employ increasingly flexible modes of production. Brand gathered the members again so as to write a more advance conferencing system called, the Whole Earth ‘Lectronis Link (WELL). 1990 to 1993: According to Turner, Internet and World Wide Web were realized. Room sized, stand-alone calculating machines of the cold-war era disappeared and so did the armored rooms in which they were housed. The up to date computer at that time were the Microcomputers which were the size of notebooks and they were also one user. In addition to that they could perform a wide range of tasks. Brand brought the U.S. Congress, global corporations, for example Shell Oil, and other digital software and equipment communities together into network forums. Drawing on the systems rhetoric of cybernetics and on models of entrepreneurship borrowed from both the research and the countercultural worlds, Brand established a series of meetings, publications, and digital networks within which members of multiple communities could meet and collaborate and imagine themselves as members of a single community. These forums in turn generated new social networks, new cultural categories, and new turns of phrase (Turner, 2006, p. 42). Brand, Kevin Kelly, Howard Rheingold, Esther Dyson and John Perry wrote a magazine called Wired. 1994 to 1996: Realization that computers are really adopted as symbols of transformation (Turner, 2006, p. 2). John Perry Barlow saw the Telecommunication Act being enacted that sought to restrict pornography on the Internet. Finally, Turner’s book seeks to address two different cultures. That of the military-industrial research that occurred during the World War 2 and that of the American counter culture. 1997: According to Isaacson, after becoming iCEO, Jobs gathered his top management for a discussion on top management issues of concern. Same year, Jonathan was planning to quit as the company was focusing of profit maximization rather than the design of its products. He reminded the team members that, “...our goal is not just to make money but to make great products”. He added that, “The decisions you make based on that philosophy are fundamentally different from the ones we had been making at Apple.” From this, it was clear that the most important factor of Job’s was the design of the Apple products so that they would remain competitive and keep the original design original. “What I really despise is when I sense some carelessness in a product.” Job’s made the most amazing designs based on their designs and engineering of the most important internal designs. 2001, February: Former IBM employees, families of key individuals and survivors of World War II showed up to provide evidence of the dealings of IBM and the Nazi government. 2011: Isaacson provides a super account for Job’s previous works and his personal life. According to Isaacson, Jobs personality was always up front with regard to the products that he created, this can be evidenced by the revolution from Macintosh to iPad generation, hardware and software integration. He thought of himself as an artist, and he also indulged in the temperament of one. Job’s quest for perfection made Apple account and control every single product that Apple made. According to Isaacson, this ability to integrate hardware and software and content into one unified system enabled him to impose simplicity. The astronomer Johannes Kepler declared that “nature loves simplicity and unity.” So did Steve Jobs. Jobs, believed in doing things in a systematic manner. That is, “We do these things not because we are control freaks. We do them because we want to make great products, because we care about the user, and because we like to take responsibility for the entire experience rather than turn out the crap that other people make.” Jobs loved the Zen gardens of Kyoto. Through this exposure, he was able to be better in decision making and setting priorities. According to Isaacson, if something engaged him—the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store—he was relentless. Jonathan was an intelligent individual as he understood business and marketing concepts. Jobs added, “If I had a spiritual partner at Apple, it’s Jony. Jony and I think up most of the products together and then pull others in and say, “Hey, what do you think about this?” He gets the big picture as well as the most infinitesimal details about each product. And he understands that Apple is a product company. He’s not just a designer. That’s why he works directly for me. He has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me. There’s no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That’s the way I set it up.” Works Cited: Black, Edwin. (2001). IBM and the Holocaust: the strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and Americas most powerful corporation. New York:Crown Publishing Group. Turner, Fred. (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press. Isaacson, Walter. (2011) . Steve Jobs.New York: Hachette Digital. Read More