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2010 due dates overview

WEEK 1
Sept.  20:  Introduction

• Class presentation slides (pdf)
• Reading:
• Zittrain, Jonathan L., Chapter 1: Introduction in The Future of the Internet an How to Stop It.  Apple has introduced a variety of ground-breaking devices, beginning with early personal computers.  In his Introduction, Jonathan Zittrain discusses a fundamental difference between these early personal computers and the iPhone, one of Apple's greatest successes.  Think about whether Zittrain's pessimistic take on the iPhone is still true in the face of the success of Apple's App Store, which opened after Zittrain's essay, and, in turn, Apple's disinclination to allow programs that compete with Apple's business. 
  
• Also of interest
• If you liked the electron micrograph of the groove of a record that I showed in class, visit Chris Supranowitz's project site at Univ. Rochester, where this and other micrographs of a variety of objects appear, including DVD pits (how data is stored), Ladybug hairs,  and a broken fly antenna.
  

Sept. 22:  What's in a computer

• Class presentation slides (pdf)
• Problem set 1, due Sept. 29,  is available
  
• Reading
• Burks, Goldstine and von Neumann,  Preliminary discussion of the logical design of an electronic computing instrument, 1946.  This famous paper describes what has become known as the "von Neumann architecture."   The first page is a clear description of how computers are organized, though in archaic terminology. There's no need to read much beyond that, though section 3 is also quite germane.
• Turing, Alan M., Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Mind, 59 (1950): Sections 4 and 5. This paper is renowned as asking the great question of artificial intelligence: whether machines can think.  However, Sections 4 and 5 provide an alternative description of how machines operate, not so detailed as von Neumann's.
  
• Also of interest (optional),  on history of computers:
  
  • The Babbage Engine, Computer History Museum, London, includes video of the first physical realization of Difference Engine No. 2, built in 2002, working!
    
  • University of Pennsylvania Engineering -- the ENIAC Museum
    
  • The Manchester Small Scale  Experimental  Machine ("Baby")
  • Electronic Computer Project (von Neumann's early computer project at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton
  • video: George Dyson, Western Washington University: "Barricelli's Universe: Digital Computing in Princeton 1945-1958",  Princeton University Public Lecture Series, Oct. 5,  2004.   Interesting talk primarily about von Neumann and the IAS machine, but also about the scientists and engineers who influenced him and whom he influences.

• Class presentation slides: Part 1, the Toy machine  (pdf);  Part 2, real machines (pdf)

• Class presentation slides: Algorithms
  

• Class slides supplemental to Oct 18 posting