computer science essay
The Evolution and Impact of Computer Science: An In-Depth Analysis
In the 1950s and 1960s, many different thoughts about the future of what is then referred to as automatic computation burst onto the scene. In 1958, the National Science Foundation, in a desperate plea for grant requests in an essentially unfunded area known as “automatic computation,” implored the academic community for proposals so that automated operation should replace the labors of a cadre of dedicated clerks. Later in the 1960s came more sophisticated thoughts like the Licklider office of the future whose key piece of equipment declared to be the computer, which will be the premier career for the best brains in the country, and the rise of the computerphile, according to Herbert Grosch. Between 1957 and 1963, it was Herbert Grosch himself who was the only private consultant in automatic computation in Massachusetts. After that, it got to be a worked-out technology, so it was not a research subject for some time. But it became so back again during that great expansion in the 1980s. At that time, there was a tremendous amount of actual research in computer design, meaning the underlying technology. Most recently, it was the William Wulf view that three threads are at the very core of the automation of our future – to wit, the advances in the miniaturization of semiconductor circuits, the communications technology allowing for interconnection of these small computers into networks, and our understanding of how to organize these computers so that their aggregate power can be harnessed.
Computer science (CS) is everywhere! It is the engine that keeps the technological world running. The renowned US computer scientist C. Gordon Bell said that “We live in a world that is auto-generated by computers. They design, build, and control complex systems as small as children’s toys and as large as cities. Computers contribute to our welfare. They enhance our intellectual and artistic creativity.” The issue of what CS is, its evolution, and its relationship with other disciplines needs to be outlined clearly at the very beginning of this book. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a concise overview of the origins of CS and its relationship with mathematical and engineering sciences, to describe some of its fundamental and applied areas, and to show how these areas interact with one another.
In summary, the process of computing is a machine to manipulate data stored in its memory. Computer science is the science of digital machine assistance. Software contains the instructions found in the memory of the computer. Computers and computer science are very important parts of every discipline today due to their impact on our society.
The term information describes the knowledge that is derived from data, as in “stored in data.” Data, in turn, consists of symbols that can represent the information needed to qualitatively describe facts and character algebra. Each of these symbols consists of the value of some observation or measurement that represents a single or set of observations. For example, the integer 123 could be considered data indicative of the number of items in a grocery cart, and the observation of a person’s characteristic could be encoded by a simple symbol like a dollar symbol. Data can be obtained in a joint observational or experimental way as a means to resolve any question.
In practice, the term computer usually refers to the integrated package of hardware (like the computer devices we use every day) and software to manipulate information by roundabout statistical processes on digital memory, and the system is used to perform tasks (applications) that might have been done by humans in person. The software component consists of those information-bearing instructions in the memory. Called programs, they are used to make a computer work. Sometimes, the term software refers only to a specific portion of the program. The operations that a computer can carry out can often be referred to in one word: compute.
A computer is an electronic digital device that operates and computes by controlling complex systems according to a set of rules. It performs arithmetic and logic by manipulating symbols stored in digital memory. This is the traditional von Neumann architecture, which consists of a memory system for data to be manipulated, a control unit to regulate the operation of the processor, and a processing unit that carries out the actions. Smaller computers, however, have only the processor and store data instructions in a different part of their memory.
2.1 A Computer in a Nutshell The operation of a computer is mysterious to many. The concept of a computer is actually quite simple, however. The term computer is used in other contexts. For example, you have probably heard of “weather computers,” “cybernetics,” and “psychological computers” before. However, computer science studies the general-purpose computers we use every day.
2. Overview of Key Concepts in Computer Science This section of work provides explanations of key concepts and theories that underlie computer science.
1.1 Introduction This chapter describes key concepts and theories in computer science. The first section gives an overview of computers, including basic definitions like computer, information, data, and program, as well as classifications of computers based on their size, cost, and so on. It will then discuss the relationship between computer science and other disciplines that make rapid progress in the field possible. The last section discusses some theories and seminal thought in computer science, including algorithms, automata theory of computation, the Church-Turing thesis, and a review of the major periods of computer science since its inception.
Our engagement in these problems is not solely through instruments plugged into scientific or technical computing, although that is a critical area. The interconnections are made through tutorials, symposia, and conferences that cover the computational methods that address these different application areas. These include areas such as visualization, ways to increase coding productivity, the integration of numerical and symbolic computation, effective representation and management of data, the expansion of our abilities through leveraging large-scale national infrastructure, and the resolution of a broader palette of disparate problems coming from our modern world. Later on, we will discuss in detail a few selected concrete example application areas such as bioinformatics, education, and teaching, earth systems engineering and management, and a project to build an Asynchronous Learning Network facility.
Applications in computer science encompass a myriad of different fields, tied together by a commonly overarching need to use information and data to solve problems. Some applications of computer science are bioinformatics, geographical information systems (GIS), the World Wide Web, archiving and data banking, museums and digital libraries, commerce, teaching and learning, healthcare, and mass transit. The primary factors enabling the surge of computing into many diverse areas are the dramatic growth in computing power and the concurrent sizable decreases in costs. Scientists and engineers across all disciplines are harnessing the horsepower of computers, improved research, and decision-making abilities. These advances do not occur in isolation but build on decades of research and one breakthrough after another.
We are optimistic that computer science will be ready to face these challenges by 2010, making its already significant influence many times larger. Because of some interesting technological and economic reasons, we are inclined to adopt the potentially widely influential interpretation that an Engineering View of Computer Science has big ideas that come linearly exponentially. The main issue is that when one does one or more levels of regulation/enforcement on a large set of state variables, one at a time, in sequence, rather than all at once. The relative size of large vs. small reflects the relative technological vs. economic aspects of computer science. With this interpretation in mind, consider again the need to understand Computer Science in an engineering context, a need that was noted in the Preface to this book. We will for now represent the main properties of a program that controls the behavior of the computational process it implements with a set of black boxes.
There are many ethical considerations and issues in computer science that reach far beyond intellectual property-related ones. This list includes areas such as individual privacy from databases, software ownership, illegal computer access, unauthorized data modification, the limits of liability for incorrect software, the problems created by creating packages that will do most of the work in decision-making, and the varied negative effects of very fast human-to-human communication over limited-entrance channels. We thus end this chapter on an encouraging note, by identifying a potentially very important positive impact that principled use of computer science ideas can have on our growing problems by facilitating (i) the simulation of the so-called subtle and complex energy trading problems to make sure that they do not lead to sudden and catastrophic disasters, and (ii) the problem-solving in the drastically increased numbers of economic, social, and political contradictions that the wealth produced by the new world economy will likely generate.
Finally, we need to stress the following ideas: computer science uses computer methods as its medium for expression; it is splendid when useful and is necessarily dependent on sociocultural context; it stimulates students for careers in which they may be more professionally effective and, above all, it gives them tools to use much of the information generated by the society that produces them. Computer science has asserted its place in the computer landscape. It is commonly observed and reported that computers and computer-related technology find applications in almost all domains of knowledge. The trends we have considered can be a clear reflection of the interrelatedness of both science and technology. However, the question still remains unanswered. If computer applications have been found in almost all domains of human interest, are we to expect an “ubiquity” of computer science itself, hence are computers built primarily to elaborate whole systems purposes, rather than only specialized programs?
In this chapter, we address future visions and directions in the field of computer science by looking at current trends and developments that shape the applications of computers and computer technology. Computer science has become as popular as it is today thanks to the fact that it is linked to other ever-growing fields of science, engineering, and business, to name just a few. Some trends and future directions that we can identify include: ubiquity, the series of processes that lead to a point where computers and computer services are present ubiquitously, are becoming ever more efficient, more specialized and, most importantly, are gradually hidden from the users; a maturing services-oriented perspective; privacy concerns and security threats; convergence, that is, the assimilation of dislocated entities (software and systems, ideas, devices, or conventions) that implies a coming together or an approach or meeting of the infeasible toward the possible.
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