History of Computer's and Computer-mediated Communication's

One of the key aspects of human existence is our creations of community. We are social beings that desire interaction with other humans. Think about it, why do we consider one of the worst punishments in our correctional institutions to be solitary confinement? We have long known that the feeling and perception of being alone can have devastating impacts on people. It can lead to depression, feeling as an outsider, and even at the most extreme cases suicide. Along with the psychological impacts of being alone humans really can barely survive as individuals. We have created community throughout time, going back to prehistoric man in small kin based groups and evolving into complex cities with many ‘communities.’ Yet what is community? The ideas about community have long been debated and a general definition would be a group of people that interact and live relatively close in terms of geographical space and time. In the digital age where the internet is starting to become a dominant medium of interaction, especially with younger generations, the idea of community is again changing. The internet allows a community to form in a new medium, where geographical space and time become almost irrelevant. As long as you have a computer you can connect to internet, you can participate in a virtual community.
In order to understand virtual communities you have to look at the creation of computers and computer-mediated communication technologies. For computers were never originally designed to communicate with each other, instead they were seen as information processors. The first ‘computers’ were people, as the definition stems from the 17th century for one that computes, mainly in the realm of mathematical problems. The idea and definition of computers as a machine and not a person started to develop later in the 18th and 19th centuries as people began to work on complex mechanical machines that aided people in doing complex math problems.
The abacus, a simple counting aid, which is thought to have been invented in Babylonia (now Iraq) in the fourth century B.C is considered one of the first computer’s in the sense that it aided a person in computing (add link to pic). These counting machines developed over time into complex mechanical machines. A key figure(s) in the history/evolution of computers is Charles Babbage and Augusta Ada Lovelace (Bryon). Babbage’s big idea was the Analytical Engine.
This mechanical computer concept would have been operated using punch-cards similar to that of the Jacquard loom (link to an explanation/pic) (also worked using punch-cards). Lovelace and Babbage thought the machine could perform simple conditional operations. (insert pic link) His idea was important because of the punch-card concept that can be considered a read only computer due to the punch-cards. These punch-cards can be seen as some of the first ideas of the ‘computer program’ that are essential in running computers. Ada Lovelace worked with Babbage and saw the potential of the analytical engine beyond mathematical problem solving. She is often accredited with being one of the first great idea creators of the computer program and seeing the vast potential that the machine’s output of numbers could represent more than numbers themselves, such as musical notes.
As with almost all great technological achievements and ideas, the creation of computer’s was happening in several locations at about the same time in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s . Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, completed the first general purpose programmable calculator in 1941. (insert pic link). It wasn’t until late 1930’s and early 1940’s that computers made the switch from mechanical machines to electrical machines.
During the war the allie relied on mainly women as computers.
Colossus, a British computer used for code-breaking, is operational by December of 1943. ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzor and Computer, is developed by the Ballistics Research Laboratory in Maryland to assist in the preparation of firing tables for artillery. It is built at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering and completed in November 1945.

It wasn’t until the electric age that the term ‘computer’ as we know it started to develop. The first computers were room sized machines that were essentially a calculator. These early computers were completely dependent on having a person present to feed it information to process. These early computers didn’t have screens
In the
Beep, beep, beep, the eerie sound that was broadcasted all over the world on October 4, 1957. The sound was created by a small 2 foot satellite that was launched by the Soviet Union. The satellite may have been small the psychological and political impact it made changed not only the United States but the world. The US government and the people got a big slap in the face. We realized that if the Soviets could launch a satellite into space then they could put a nuclear weapon on the tip of that rocket instead of a satellite and strike any target anywhere in the world. Many in the military and the government realized how vulnerable we were. This is why they created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in February 1958.
The goals of ARPA were to create military technology that would keep us ahead of the Soviets. One of the greatest achievements of this research was that of ARPANet. The reason for the need of ARPANet was that our older telecommunications were all centralized and could be knocked out of commission if a nuclear bomb was set off in the United States would cripple the United States ability to govern and counter-attack. The idea of ARPANet pulls from the realization that researchers working for ARPA were spread all over the country and they wanted to access and use the

Quick update

Here are some of the ideas that I will be presenting in class:

-what are virtual communities? when and why did they start?

-brief overview of the internet and the different communities that formed in the early years of the internet? Getting at the notion of why did we form 'virtual communities?'

-the idea of the virtual is not a new concept just the medium in which it is represented has changed.

-examining McLuhan's medium theory and the idea that 'medium is the message' in correlation to the digital age/internet.

Proposed Research Methods

Since I am doing the history of computer mediated communications, my research methods will be fairly traditional in the descriptive history. I will be reading a lot of journal articles and finding many books to pick information from. Im going to really focus on media Ecology and medium theory to help explain the past of virtual communities. The reason for this being that the medium that allows human interaction is vital in how people are allowed to interact and really structures the communities, especially early on in the internet. The hardware's (computer's) technological advancement really helped the development of the medium of the internet. My research will involve a lot of deep readings and trying to organize my research with new technology.

Another aspect of my research will be looking at anyone that has written about the history of the internet, virtual communities, case studies of specific virtual communities, or really anything relating to history of 'cyberspace'. I want to trace the idea of the 'virtual' through the past and see if our version of 'virtual reality' is similar to people of the past that only had cave paintings, minds eye, plays, etc. While going through these readings I really want to try and utilize tools such as evernote, diigo, and anything else I find in cyberspace that may be helpful. To help pick apart the readings and write my thoughts, highlight quotes, etc. I want to use as much computer technology as I can to conduct my research so I can explore how to adapt old ideas into new technology, while also trying to figure out my own method of organizing my research notes. I need to also pay attention to the other students in the class to keep myself in check in how my research will fit in with everyone else's research, it is a collaborative project, my fellow students can be a great source of information that I may have never been able to find on my own.

Along with the different tools that are out there to help people organize research, I want to dive into cyberspace and become a more active member of the virtual. To do this I plan on blogging, vlogging, and even joining one or more virtual communties, such as second life. I feel this would be beneficial when I conduct my research so that I have a better personal understanding and better insight into the virtual world. I can have real experience that would help me analyze the writings that I will be reading. Saturating myself in the virtual world will help get me in a mindset that will help me conduct research or bring new ideas that I should investigate.

To sum up, I will be doing a lot of traditional deep readings, but I want to utilize computer's to develop a method of digital research utilizing computer tools that are made to aid people doing research. While reading through peoples work I may find that I want talk to the author so I may have to do some interviews either face-to-face or through the medium of the internet in a skype interview. I also want to dive head first in becoming an active participant in a virtual community.