Communication Culture and Technology CCT Georgetown University Spring

Communication, Culture and Technology (CCT) Georgetown University ----Spring 2017 ----- The History of Computing J. R. Osborn Evan Barba

Where are we? (and how did we get here? ) You are here

https: //www. interaction-design. org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2 nded/socio-technical-system-design

Today • we’re going to talk about how computing evolved from machines that did repetitive mathematical tasks to …. whatever they are today. • this is a story about technology and how people use it.

What is computing? It is one of those questions that will never be fully settled because new discoveries and maturing understandings constantly lead to new insights. It is like the fundamental questions in other fields -- for example, “what is life? ” in biology and “what are the fundamental forces? ” in physics -- that will never be fully resolved. Engaging with the question is more valuable than finding a definitive answer. -- Peter J. Denning

What is computing? It is not (just) what a machine does. It is not (just) digital … or even electronic. Computing is the manipulation of numbers and symbols following established procedures.

It’s not just for machines

Not necessarily electric “Digital” “Analog”

Not just digital “Digital” “Analog”

Analog computing

The Jacquard Loom

Binary Representation Information coded into the presence or absence of cardboard

This portrait of Jacquard was woven in silk on a Jacquard loom and required 24, 000 punched cards to create (1839). Charles Babbage owned one of these portraits; it inspired him in using perforated cards in his analytical engine. https: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Jacq uard_loom

The Analytical Engine First “General Purpose Computer” programmable

Ada Lovelace 1815 -1852 Only “legitimate” child of Lord Byron First programmer

The Analytical Engine First “General Purpose Computer” Programmable “Turing Complete”

Turing Machine (& Universal Turing machine) “On computable numbers” Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 1936 -7 Alan Turing (June 1912 – 7 June 1954)

WWII - Enigma Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rózyki and Henryk Zygalski

A computer is “Turing Complete” or “Computationally Universal” if it can be shown to simulate any known “Turing Machine” So what is a Turing Machine?

Turing Machine 1. Tape 2. A Read/Write Device • Write a symbol • Move to left or right one space • Changes states 3. A Memory of its state 4. A Table of Instructions State Instruction 011 If 0, write a 1, Move to left, Switch to state 013 012 If 1, write a 1, move to right, switch to state 075 013 …

Universal Turing Machine 1. Tape 2. A Read/Write Device • Write a symbol • Move to left or right one space • Changes states 3. A Memory of its state 4. A Table of Instructions

WWII – ENIAC Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer

Electrical

4 Modes of Interaction 1. 2. 3. 4. Electrical Symbolic Textual Graphical “I want to present the stages in the historical development of user interfaces in terms of the different sets of human skills (human abilities, human behaviors) that the are designed to exploit. ” – Paul Dourish, 2001

Symbolic

The Jacquard Loom

Symbolic

Textual

Textual

Textual

Dvorak Keyboard *Allows users to type 20 -40% FASTER

“During the 1940’s US Navy experiments had shown that the increased efficiency obtained with Dvorak would amortize the cost of retraining a group of typists within the first ten days of their subsequent full-time employment” Dvorak Keyboard *Allows users to type 20 -40% FASTER

QWERTY is king! Consistency

QWERTY is king!

T

Ty

Typ

Type

Typew

Typewr

Typewri

Typewrit

Typewrite

Typewriter

QWERTY is king! Consistency

Path Dependency Features 1. Technical Interrelatedness – Relations of hardware, software, users, community Socio-Technical 2. Economies of Scale – What are System the costs of!new hardware? 3. Quasi-Irreversibility of investment – What skills are already present?

Thumbs ≠ efficiency

“In our times people are often willing to make drastic changes in the way they live to accommodate technological innovation while at the same time resisting similar kinds of changes justified on political grounds. ” – Langdon Winner, 1986, p. 11

Affordances • Introduced by perceptual psychologist James Gibson: – Possibilities of action that are latent in the environment – What can be done? • Used by Donald Norman to describe the action possibilities perceivable by an actor

Don Norman

Conceptual Models

Classic Mac. OS icons as conceptual model

Graphical (GUI)

Graphical (GUI)

Touch, Voice, Gesture, Affective, Haptic etc. .

The human body is obsolete technology Stelarc’s Amplified Body

Embodied Interaction: Microsoft Surface Table

Embodied Interaction: Kinect

We are always interfacing.

We are always interfacing. You are here

We are always interfacing. Increasingly more and more of human behavior is being sampled and converted to information and becoming subject to computation. You are here