1. Wonderful World of Computers CS-SAMS Summer Academy for Math & Sciences - Computer Science Summer 2004

2. What is Computer Science? There are courses, departments, and schools of computer science, but what IS “computer science”? What do computer scientists do? What is computer programming?

3. Careers in Computer Science Artificial Intelligence -- Develop computers that simulate human learning and reasoning ability. Computer Design and Engineering -- Design new computer circuits, microchips, and other electronic components. Computer Architecture -- Design new computer instruction sets, and combine electronic or optical components to provide powerful but cost-effective computing. Information Technology -- Develop and manage information systems that support a business or organization.

4. Careers in Computer Science Software Engineering -- Develop methods for the production of software systems on time, within budget, and with few or no defects. Computer Theory -- Investigate the fundamental theories of how computers solve problems, and apply the results to other areas of computer science. Operating Systems and Networks -- Develop the basic software computers use to supervise themselves or to communicate with other computers. Software Applications -- Apply computing and technology to solving problems outside the computer field - in education or medicine, for example.

5. The Past In the mid 1800’s, Charles Babbage and Ada LoveLace discussed computing machines. Electron was discovered in 1895 The field of electronic computing began to take shape in the 1930’s. Hence, the field is almost 70 years old. Binary Numbers started to become “in vogue”.

6. The Past continued.. First electronic computers were built in 1940’s –For large scientific calculations –Calculate trajectories –Code breaking In 1950, IBM and Univac bet computers would become the engine to run large businesses News Media called them “electronic Brains” Projected number of machines - only a dozen

7. The Past continued.. The first programming languages in 1950s and 1960s –Algol, Fortran, Cobol and Lisp First Operating System designed in 1960’s First Hand calculator appeared in 1972 Computer chip appeared in late 1970’s IBM PC in 1981

8. Networks and the Present ARPANET ==> Internet ==> World Wide Web ==> ?? 1970 1970s 1992 now? We are all connected by Email, world wide web We can chat with a friend halfway around the world for free We can play games with a remote friend We can instantly exchange our pictures over the web We can monitor what happens at our home from any remote location We can pay our bills over internet

9. The Present Our cars, homes, and all gadgets we wear are computerized “Technology is the fabric of our life” “If all computers were taken out of commission the world will stop working instantly” “We have become socially isolated and have form relationships with our virtual friends” “Fighting terrorism using technology”

10. The Future By 2047, almost all the information will be in cyberspace –Physical objects, humans, buildings, processes and organizations We can communicate with one another remotely using all our sensors Computers will be 100,000 times more powerful than today

11. The Future Suppose you want to store all you do in a lifetime –Read Text (60-300 GB) –Speech Text (15 GB) –Speech (compressed) - 1.2 TB –Video (compressed) - 1PetaByte - million GigaBytes What is the storage cost of all this?

12. Some Challenges of the Future Much of the world population is illiterate Understand Video, Music, Gestures –Mulitple language and cross-culture issues Computers Teaching Kids how to Read Robots Video and Audio synthesis –Entire movies and plays to be synthetically generated Body Nets –Artificial eyes –Remote controlled mouse By 2010 speech recognition is available in any device you can think of - Cars, radios, phones, toys Computers disappear to become components for everything

13. Past-Future Predictions gone wrong –1943- Thomas Watson (IBM) predicted only 5 computers would be needed for the entire country –1977 - CEO of Digital - There would be no use of home computers –1982 - Bill Gates thought 640K of RAM would suffice for many personal users for years to come –Some form of voice input and output will be common by 1978 The Great Big Promise of Artificial Intelligence –In 1950 Turing believed that by 2000 we will have computers that would not be distinguishable from humans –Chess playing machines would beat world masters by 1980 –But Kasporav could not be beaten by a computer until late 1990’s

14. Top Ten Reasons for Becoming a Computer Scientist 1.I thought it would be a great way to learn how to type. 2.I no longer need to sleep at night. Now I just take naps while I wait for the system to respond to my commands. 3.The Binary Number System. 4.The fact that once I become a computer scientist, I can financialy ruin Bill Gates to the point that Babygirl Gates has to go to community college. 5.Since we are on the money subject, as tempting as most low wage, benefitless jobs are, I am opting for the big bucks of computer science.

15. Top Ten Reasons for Becoming a Computer Scientist 6. Getting to work on the dingy, dirty, oily, filthy, keyboards in the student computer lab. 7. Have I mentioned the Binary Number System yet? 8. There is nothing like a tension headache caused by staring at the monitor. 9. Graduating Suma Cum Lade because I know how to hack into the system and change my grades. 10. I want to be a nerd like the teacher. courtesy: Becky Zagurski