Swedin & Ferro's "Computers" Part 2

      In the second half of the book, computers are taking the world by storm. From the 1970's on, advancements pushed computer technology to places previously thought impossible. It began to become a machine that no longer had to be operated by academics and electrical engineers. As a quote on pg 107 explains this,"Television, as a mass medium, had not been used up to then [1984] because the market for personal computers has not been a mass consumer product. Now it was." Computers no longer were created by a single scientist in the basement of university building. Different companies specialized in various components that contributed to the making of one machine; intel excelled in making microprocessors. On its own, the market of computers evolved like the concept of an assembly line, where efficiency and quality ruled. Interestingly, the market of computers migrated, or rather expanded, from research use/ military defense to businesses to the individual consumer.
      And, computers no longer served as just a practical tool to to create ledgers and solve complex algebra problems. They were beginning to infiltrate the everyday life, as games such as Pong by Atari were being played in arcades across the country. It was like a new breed of species had joined the American human population (since the book mostly focuses on computers in America). It even created its own language(s), so it really did become a whole other realm in technology: "Computers and electronics have become pervasive in everyday life. What was once high technology is now mundane."
     The evolution of technology works in such a way that it builds upon what has been previously in place. Transportation for instance, didn't jump from a bicycle to an army jet. There is a clear and concise trend of discoveries, that leads one to the other. Which is why I should not have been surprised that the internet did not come from nothing, as I had previously thought. Email and web browsing did not come instantly. In fact, "The first message transmitted between UCLA and SRI  [on the ARPAnet] was "L-O-G"...then the system crashed" which obviously was a far cry from the internet as we know it today. But while advancement occurred sequentially, it did progress quickly, any by 1977 and experiment with a TCP system that successfully transmitted information from San Francisco to London and back. The kind of impact that computers and the internet have and continue to have is tremendous, constantly making our lives more efficient, and even adding a layer of enjoyment to it.