Tuesday, July 6, 2010

1963: The first computer nerd?

Computer pioneer Jean F. Hall fondling AVIDAC in 1953.


I miss my blog. Why did I decide to take summer courses? (Aside from the fact that I want money to food and alcohol.) Well, "Russian for Beginners" is soon finished, thank God. Russian grammar isn't the loveliest thing in the world, believe me.

Now I need to concentrate on a ridiculous little course called "Internet and World Wide Web". I know, hilarious. I thought it would be a breeze, with assignments like "How to open a web browser" and "How to attach a Word document to an email". Now, I am currently writing about the history of the Internet, which is surprisingly interesting. How cute isn't the little computer nerd in the video below? It's a documentary like film clip about the potential of computers and ... connecting of computers! This is high-tech stuff. And how can they make a computer work on more than one mathematical problem at a time?

"Does the computer understand English?"
"No, it's actually more like algebra."

I don't know, I just find that man to the right very charming. Might he be the first computer nerd?




Oh, and I still don't know anything about the Internetz or "nodes" or "networks" or that other stuff. I will fail so hard. I'll just find something to do in the kitchen...

2 comments:

Lisa said...

Great post! If you're still looking for research, Steven Levy's "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" is a good overview of the early internet & computing. Sadly, not many women in the story though.

Lolita of the Classics said...

Lisa:
Thank you for the tip! Glad someone commented on this post, haha!