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"What Should a Well-Informed Person Know About Computers?" -- by Brian Kernighan

Old Guard Summit
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Invited presentation at a meeting of the Old Guard of Summit NJ on January 5, 2021. Brian Kernighan is a professor of computer science at Princeton University and one of the original Unix pioneers at Bell Labs. Brian described his experiences teaching "Computers in Our World," a first year course designed to inform non-technical students how modern hardware, software and communications systems operate, and their ubiquitous role in today's world. It was a 45-minute version of his one-semester talk! Ref: https://www.SummitOldGuard.org Ref: https://redoak.org/youtube ...more
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Three big ideas hardware

7:27

Hardware: tangible devices and gadgets • computers represent and process digital information

7:47

Babbage's CPU?

11:19

Fundamental hardware ideas a computer is a general purpose machine

11:54

Hardware gets better but stays the same

14:34

Software: telling a computer what to do

17:26

Fundamental software ideas • computers don't do anything without software all the systems we use are controlled by soliware

21:24

Communications: computers talk to each other

22:54

The Internet (from 10,000 foot)

25:20

Fundamental communications ideas • the Intemet provides universal connectivity

28:55

The (World Wide) Web

30:43

Four issues (of many) personal privacy and security are under threat from many sides

32:24

"Surveillance Capitalism" • myriad companies collect data about us personal information is collected aggregated. analyzed and sold, for targeted advertising - it can also be used for discrimination, crime, government action....

34:23

Advertising marketplace when you use a browser to request a web page space on that page is available

36:11

Government Surveillance government agencies at all levels in all countries monitor, and sometimes control, all communications systems - Edward Snowden 2013

39:26

Criminal activity . criminals are attacking individuals continuously - spam, phishing, trojan horses, viruses, worms, ransomware also attacking companies and governments continuously - al of the above, plus attacks on databases and denial of service

41:59

"Internet of Things" everything is being connected

43:46

What could possibly go wrong?

46:14
"What Should a Well-Informed Person Know About Computers?" -- by Brian Kernighan
317Likes
13,570Views
2021Jan 9
Invited presentation at a meeting of the Old Guard of Summit NJ on January 5, 2021. Brian Kernighan is a professor of computer science at Princeton University and one of the original Unix pioneers at Bell Labs. Brian described his experiences teaching "Computers in Our World," a first year course designed to inform non-technical students how modern hardware, software and communications systems operate, and their ubiquitous role in today's world. It was a 45-minute version of his one-semester talk! Ref: https://www.SummitOldGuard.org Ref: https://redoak.org/youtube

Follow along using the transcript.

Old Guard Summit

3.05K subscribers