Welcome to Technology
In today’s world, there is no getting through the day without interacting with a computer. From your smart phone to the control device in your car, computers have worked their way into every facet of our lives. So I wanted to talk a bit about what a computer is, and then get into some basic topics so you can understand the fundamentals to build from.
What is a computer?
A computer is nothing more than a big calculator that takes in input and delivers some output. Computers are modeled after our own behavior, and the main processor of a computer acts very similarly to the logical part of our brain but without all the emotional baggage.
Here’s a short list of where we can find computers, outside of the screen you’re looking at right now to read this:
- Cars – Unless your car is a classic from the 70s or earlier (or a special 1968 VW), you have a computer in it to control the main system and accessories.
- Telephone – Most desk phones at work use VoIP which means Voice over Internet Protocol. Thus, the phone is essentially a computer with an internet connection. Even if you have a rotary phone in your house, it connects to other phones by computer switches owned and operated by the phone company.
- Utilities – SCADA computers are used to measure flows, currents, levels, etc. of all the utilities that come in and out of our homes.
- Basically Everything – One would be hard-pressed to find some aspect of society that doesn’t utilize computers, since they do all kinds of calculations and rote tasks to help make our days go smoothly. One thing is for sure. When they work, they’re great! When they don’t… well, we all know how that goes.
Binary language
The first thing to know about computers is how they communicate. Binary is the language of computers – from the earliest form when computers filled a whole room, to the smartphone you hold in your hand. They all speak in binary language, measured in ‘bits’ and ‘bytes’. People have heard of 1s and 0s as binary, but what does that really mean? Well, think of 1 as a ‘yes’ and 0 as a ‘no’. If the computer sees a 1, it goes one way, if it sees a 0, it goes another way. The results of combined 1s and 0s make up things like letters that you type all the way to photos, videos, and beyond. To give an example, a standard photo taken with a mid-range smartphone contains tens of thousands to over a million sets of 1s and 0s, with each color of the image consisting of how a computer interprets all those digits. It’s pretty mind-boggling to think about, but the basic concept is all that’s needed to be understood. Binary has been in existence and in use since as far back at 2400 BC (BCE), although most date it to Gottfried Leibniz in 1689 AD (CE).
Files and Folders
Understanding how a computer stores data is essential to operating it more easily. The best way to think how a computer organizes is by looking at a traditional filing cabinet, where you’ll find labeled folders with papers in each one. The pages in the folders would be called ‘files’ on a computer, but basically it works the same. The main difference between a filing cabinet and a computer is that a folder can be inside another folder, called a sub-folder. So, for example, if you had a main ‘Financial’ folder on a computer, you could have sub-folders within it called ‘taxes’ and ‘bank accounts’ and so on. Then in each sub-folder you could have files (individual pages) in them. This is how to organize your data on a computer. Start with a master folder, and then make more specific sub-folders, then put the files in each one. Taking this concept one step further, on a Windows or Mac computer, your Desktop is actually a main (top-level) folder, too! So is the Documents folder, and the Downloads folder, the Pictures folder, etc. The tricky part to this system, like a filing cabinet, is remembering where you put everything. Thankfully, computers have a ‘find’ tool to help locate files you need.
Just Reboot and You’ll Be Fine
Have you ever had a computer issue, and someone said to just reboot your device? It may sound dismissive, but there’s some good tech science to it. Computers constantly operate off of sets of instructions, and sometimes these instructions hit a glitch and things stop working like they are supposed to. Essentially, the commands no longer run properly. Most times, the only way to get all the instructions back in order is to reset the device by turning it off then back on. This allows the computer to purge and reload its programming. By some estimates, restarting (rebooting) a program or device will fix 60% of the issues you run into with a computer or even a smartphone.
Unplugging to reset: If you are instructed to turn off and unplug the device, you have to wait about 20 seconds on most computers before turning them back on. The reason for this is that energy is stored statically in the computer for a period of time after being unplugged. If you plug it back in too soon, the error that was held in the static energy doesn’t get flushed, and the problem won’t be able to correct. This only applies to computers and computer-driven electronic devices that can actually be unplugged, or battery removed. With current smartphones, there is no taking out the battery, so they instead are simply powered off and then turned back on to do a reset.
Where Exactly is ‘The Cloud’?
By now, the term, ‘the cloud’ is pervasive in our society. This etheric and unknown location can really baffle us, thinking it is some magical place that’s unreachable. The truth is, ‘the cloud’ is simply a server (essentially a high-tech computer dedicated to sending you information) that is not in your home. So when someone says that your pictures or emails are in the cloud, it means that they are stored in a place, typically a warehouse of computers whose purpose is to store data like photos or emails, and be available to send the information back to your device upon request. In fact, whenever you pull up a piece of news, or a photo that someone sent you, it is retrieving the information, in the form of a file, from a server folder or database in some remote location.
The advantage of items being in the cloud is mainly that if your computer or smartphone is damaged or destroyed, the data can be retrieved to a replacement device, because that data wasn’t really ever stored solely on your device, but it also exists on a server away from your home. The disadvantage of having your information in the cloud is that it is potentially viewed by others who work for those storage companies, and sometimes cloud servers are hacked and the information is stolen. Then your personal information can end up on something called the dark web, where criminals can do all kinds of nefarious things like try to open up new accounts in your name, or purchase items with stolen credit card numbers. Companies that run cloud services spend a lot of time and energy making sure the data is safe. But one way to protect your exposure in the event of a hacker is to get a credit monitoring service, like Credit Karma, or other similar paid service.
This concludes a basic introduction to technology. What else would you like to know? Please use the Contact page to send me a message. I’m happy to reply to you directly, or create a new post from your suggestion.
