Five hundred years ago, people who rode horses had a big advantage. Traders transported their goods long distances and made big profits, and administrators travelled all over their controlled areas. Soldiers conquered new lands where horses were unknown, and preachers carried their religion far and wide. Horse riders conquered the world. The gain was not that of the stable hands caring for the horses! The winners were those who rode horses for their own work.
You can see that those who use computers in their work are conquering the world now. Prof. V. Rajaraman's book “Anecdotes from the History of Modern Computing” (Publisher: PHI Learning) is essential reading for every student and graduate. You need not be a computer science student or a stable hand to read it!
The book begins with a valuable quote from Rudyard Kipling: “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” Yes, however, I treasure the book for a different reason. Using highly readable anecdotes, it teaches the vocabulary and concepts essential for the modern age.
I will illustrate what I mean by “vocabulary and concepts” in this context with ten questions. Please try to answer them to see how ready you are for the future.
1. I took a photo of my Adhaar card. Should I store it as a *.jpg photo or as a *.pdf document so that I can print it easily whenever I need a copy?
2. My brother told our mother that the encryption used by banks is mathematically proven to be unbreakable. How true is this?
3. What is mp3? Is it a compression algorithm for photos?
4. The police often track a hacker who sends threatening emails by using the IP address from which the email was generated. What is an IP address?
5. The personal computer became far more popular than more sophisticated Workstations. Why?
6. In the old days every engineering college had a “terminal room” and a powerful time-sharing computer. The students used the terminal to share the power of the time-sharing computer. Nowadays, computer rooms in these colleges have networked PCs. Why is networking valuable?
7. What is a Gigabyte?
8. What is an icon on the PC?
9. What is WWW?
10. What is WiFi?
Srinivasan Ramani
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