Qasim Abbas

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Wiki Entry #1: UNIVAC

UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer) refers to the name of a business established by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who were both inventers of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering. The company was created in response to a dispute over patent rights that ensued following the invention of ENIAC in 1946.

Before being named UNIVAC, the company was incorporated in 1946 as the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and was initially named as the Electronic Control Company. The company was sold to the Remington Rand Corporation in 1950 and adopted the name UNIVAC. The term UNIVAC is also used in reference to UNIVAC I, which was the first computer built by the company and sold as a commercial computing unit. Such is the case because even before the company began producing computers for commercial use, the technology employed in it was colloquially referred to as “UNIVAC.”

After the company’s purchase by Remington Rand, UNIVAC produced UNIVAC I, and the significance of this machine in modern history of computers is paramount. Right after the presidential election of 1952, the machine was used to accurately predict the result of the election, with a random and representative sample of only 1% of the votes casted. The results were broadcasted by CBS’ Walter Cronkite, and for the first time it gave the America public a sense of the power and importance of mainframe computers of their day. “The appearance of the UNIVAC on election night was a pivotal moment in computer history. Before that date, while some people had heard about computers, very few had actually seen one; after it, the general public had been introduced to computers and had seen at least a mockup of one” (Martin and Aspray, 1996).

However, the 1952 election wasn’t the only time UNIVAC I was used to expedite a long counting ritual. The first UNIVAC I machine was produced and delivered to the United States Census Bureau in March of 1951. “The computer was used to tabulate part of the 1950 population census and the entire 1954 economic census. Throughout the 1950's, UNIVAC also played a key role in several monthly economic surveys. The computer excelled at working with the repetitive but intricate mathematics involved in weighting and sampling for these surveys” (U.S. Census Bureau) The UNIVAC produced another machine in 1958 called the UNIVAC 1105, which was used by the Census Bureau once again to tabulate the 1960 census data.

These early successes of UNIVAC were also important turning points for the history of commercial computers because it drove IBM to compete more aggressively by building computers for civilian use. Martin and Aspray quote IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Jr. who reacted to UNIVAC I’s creation by stating “My God, here we are trying to build Defense Calculators, while UNIVAC is smart enough to start taking all the civilian business away” (Martin and Aspray, 1996). Quickly in the years following UNIVAC I, the UNIVAC Company faced fierce competition from IBM, which successfully developed and delivered more powerful computing units like the IBM 650, and by the mid 1950s broke UNIVAC’s domination of the market share.

WORKS CITED

Campbell-Kelly Martin & W. Aspray (1996) The Shaping of the Personal Computer. In Computer: A History of the Information Machine (pp. 233-258) New York: Harper Collins <http://history.msu.edu/hst250/files/2009/04/computer-a-history-of-the-information-machine-part-2.pdf>

"UNIVAC I." History. US Census Bureau, 23 Apr. 2012. Web. 27 May 2012. <http://www.census.gov/history/www/innovations/technology/univac_i.html>


Wiki Entry #2: Integrated Circuit

The Integrated Circuit is an electronic circuit that is used in every modern electronic device and has its origins in the 1940s and early 1950s, when it was first introduced. The Integrated Circuit is a form of a semiconductor device capable of conducting electronic current through solid state, as opposed to gaseous state in the case of the thermionic device (vacuum tube).

Although the origins of idea of integrated circuit dates back to 1949 when German scientist Werner Jacobi patented a device similar to the Integrated Circuit with the British government (Escapenet), actual development of the modern Integrated Circuit did not begin until Geoffrey Dummer of the British Ministry of Defense publicly unveiled the idea at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in 1952 (Electronic Product Use). After Dummer successfully built the first integrated Circuit in 1956, physicist Jack Kilby came up with his own version of the IC in September of 1958 while working for Texas Instruments (Texas Instruments).

However, Kilby isn’t credit to be the only forefather of the modern Integrated Circuit. In 1959, Robert Noyce of the Fairchild Semiconductor invented the microchip (another name for IC), which ultimately fueled the development and subsequent use of the IC in computers, replacing both the vacuum tube and the transistor. Noyce’s invention employed silicon instead of germanium (as it were in Kilby’s design) and was better able to conduct electronic current with the use of the self-aligned gates – a fundamental feature of all computer chips to this day.

As mentioned above, the Integrated Circuit replaced both the vacuum tube and the transistor for computers in the late part of the twentieth century. The Integrated Circuit alone was pivotal for the road toward the development of the personal computer because it made computers smaller and manageable for individual operators. A decade after the development of the microchip by Robert Noyce and his associates, the Fairchild Semiconductor was incorporated into the Intel Corporation.

“When Intel first began operations in 1968, it specialized in the manufacture of semiconductor memory and custom-designed chips. Intel’s custom-chip sets were typically used in calculators, video games, electronic test gear, and control equipment (Martin and Aspray, 1996). However, the microprocessor slowly started to be used in computers by the late 1970s, which made way for a departure from microcomputers to smaller personal computers.

Without the development of the Integrated Circuit, computers would not have become as small as they are today. Today Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby are celebrated as pioneers of the compact computer, and their names will go down in history as major contributors to the development of the personal computer.

WORKS CITED

"Halbleiterverstaerker." Patent Search. Escapenet, 03 Mar. 2012. Web. 03 Jun. 2012. <http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=DE&NR=833366&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP>

“The Hapless Tale of Geoffrey Dummer.” Top Products. Electronic Product Use, 10 Jan. 2005. Web. 03 Jun. 2012. <http://www.epn-online.com/page/22909/the-hapless-tale-of-geoffrey-dummer-this-is-the-sad-.html>

“The Chip that Jack Built.” Company. Texas Instruments, n.d. Web. 03 Jun. 2012. <http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/kilbyctr/jackbuilt.shtml>

Campbell-Kelly Martin & W. Aspray (1996) The Shaping of the Personal Computer. In Computer: A History of the Information Machine (pp. 233-258) New York: Harper Collins <http://history.msu.edu/hst250/files/2009/04/computer-a-history-of-the-information-machine-ch10.pdf>


Wiki Entry #3: Library of Congress Digital Library Project

The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program started in 1989 as a collaborative effort to digitize archival materials that account for America’s historical and cultural heritage over the span of its existence. By 1995, the project began its second phase as Digital entities were developed in five different forms: bitonal document images, digital video and audio, grayscale and color pictorial images, and searchable texts. In order to provide greater accessibility for users, the program also “developed a range of descriptive elements: bibliographic records, finding aids, and introductory texts and programs, as well as indexing the full text for certain types of content” (Library of Congress).

The project initially attempted to strictly use industry-standard formats that are reliable and reputable, such as Standard General Markup Language (SGML) for coding text, Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) files for storing images, or compressing images with the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) algorithm. However, as the project grew larger overtime, newer formats were also brought in to digitize materials, e.g., “RealAudio (for audio), Quicktime (for moving images), and MrSid (for maps)” (Library of Congress).

The Digital Library Initiative envisioned a National Digital Library to be a set of “distributed repositories of managed content and a set of interfaces…to that content” (Library of Congress). For this purpose, the Digital Library Initiative intended to utilize the World Wide Web to create a multitude of interfaces so the public at large could maintain full access to digitized content. The initiative also created these interfaces to replicate the functions performed by traditional libraries, but did so first by examining how users actually utilize the various functions of a library in a traditional setting. In other words, “even in traditional libraries, users do not start every visit by searching the catalog,” and for a digital library to serve user’s needs best, the creators had to make the interfaces emulate the functions used most frequently by patron.

Before launching the second phase of the initiative in 1995, the Digital Library Project consulted 51 state library agencies, 101 members of the Association of Research Libraries, and numerous state, college and university libraries. The surveys revealed a great demand for content to be accessible online, especially for students and scholars at universities and research institutes. For this reason, more than forty school and university libraries were provided with digitized versions of archived materials on CD-ROM from 1992 to 1993. In their follow-up evaluations, the project team members found a surprisingly “strong showing of enthusiasm in schools, especially at the secondary level” (Library of Congress).

The an unusually high degree of interest demonstrated by K-12 schools led the project to launch an educational outreach program in 1995 as well. The outreach effort initially entailed an ‘Educator’s Forum,” which allowed school-teachers and K-12 librarians to share ideas about creating a interfaces that could best serve their students. Subsequently, in 1996, the Library of Congress established ‘The Learning Page,’ which provided a whole host of tools for students to be able to interact with the digitized material, and learn collaboratively.

WORKS CITED

National Digital Library Program. Digital Library Initiatives. Library of Congress. 20 Feb. 1998. Web. 24 June 2012. <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dli2/html/lcndlp.html#Overview>

Wiki Article: Social Media as a Tool for Social Movements

2011 was a year that gave birth to a whole multitude of social movements around the world, including the Arab spring and the occupy movement. The Arab spring began when an unemployed street vendor set himself on fire to protest corruption and chronic unemployment in his home country of Tunisia. News of his self-immolation spread rapidly across North Africa and Middle East, which gave rise to massive protests within a matter of weeks, forcing longtime dictators like Hosni Mubarak to step down and relinquish power. The wave of unrest was due to longstanding dissatisfaction with autocratic regimes that sought to marginalize their own populations and maintain unaccountable power for decades. Although the occupy movement did not begin as a dissent against despotic power in United States, it carried certain similar grievances as the Arab Spring, particularly the growing economic inequality that has escalated as a result of the great recession. However, the greatest similarity that both movements share is the very pronounced role of new social media in sparking and sustaining the movements. The following examines how social media has provided an integral set of tools for the two movements and contrasts the way in which each movement utilizes the resources available to them.

The first incident of protest by self-immolation in December of 2010 was captured on video and put online immediately. Within days, the hundreds of thousands of people in Tunisia and neighboring countries had watched the video, and a facebook page commemorating the street vendor’s plight had been established. It did not take long for protesters to start pouring into streets of Tunisia, demanding an ouster of the sitting president and ruling dictator of thirty years. Subsequently, the entire government of Tunisia was overthrown by January 14, 1011. Protesters used twitter and facebook to their advantage, and were successful in mobilizing mass demonstrations despite the dictator’s vast security apparatus suppressing dissent.

As the Tunisian revolution erupted, major protests simultaneously started taking place in other countries of the greater Middle East, including Lebanon, Oman, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, and Morocco. However, the countries most inspired by the Tunisian revolution were the neighboring North African states of Libya and Egypt. In Egypt, protesters demonstrated night and day throughout January in the famous Tahrir Square till February 11, 2011, when Hosni Mubarak was forced to step aside and hand power over to the military. Once again, new social media such as Twitter and Facebook were instrumental in getting the word out and organizing demonstrations, as well as a political discourse that became deeply critical of the regime.

As the revolutions in both Egypt and Tunisia appeared to be successful, protesters in other neighboring Arab countries became even more determined to press their demands for ousters and government reforms. And in each case, social media played a vital role in organizing the populations. As explained by the Oxford University’s Islamic Studies Online, popular outrage against autocratic regimes in the greater Middle East had been brewing for decades before they erupted into revolutions. However, the populations needed a way to mobilize without the fear of crackdowns by the expansive security surveillance mechanisms that were created by regimes. “Perhaps the greatest sense of empowerment has come through the ability to use cyberspace as a location for doing what could not otherwise be done in reality: assemble to discuss ideas, concerns, and complaints, and to share frustrations, while also providing the social networking opportunity to unite, strategize, and plan for change” (Oxford, Islamic Studies).

The internet also provided a refuge for those who were opposed to their governments, but wanted to stay anonymous for purposes of personal safety. The cyberspace opened up a space for critical dialogue that was inclusive of all various classes, religious and ethnic minorities, and most importantly, women. Furthermore, because of its widespread utilization by the youth, social media did not provide an opportunity for Islamist groups to co-opt the revolution and promote a conservative, more fundamentalist form of government as an alternative to U.S.-friendly regimes like that of Mubarak’s. “Given the "youth bulge" in the Middle East—where between 55 and 70 percent of the population of any given country is under the age of thirty—the fact that social media and modern technology have been used to bring about political change should come as no surprise” (Oxford, Islamic Studies).

As mentioned above, women were one of biggest beneficiaries of social media’s power to mobilize disenfranchised groups. According to Oxford’s Islamic Studies, “Some of the most powerful and lasting images of the revolutions are of women marching; protesting; braving tear gas, tanks, and armed security forces; and shouting slogans.” No where was this more evident than in Egypt, where a young activist named Asmaa Mahfouz uploaded a video on YouTube pleading for women to come out into the streets of Cairo and protest in droves, and asking men to protect them from the onslaught of confrontation by security forces. Women activists also benefitted tremendously by creating a website named Harrasmap. The site provides a “digital map of Cairo showing areas where it may be dangerous for women to go alone. Women can either send text messages or tweets to the site to report incidents of harassment that are updated in real time. The goal is to allow women to help other women create a climate of safety for each other since the police and the state have failed to assure such personal security” (Oxford, Islamic Studies).

Although the Arab spring did not take place because of the widespread availability of social media in greater Middle East, social media was capable of providing a space for popular dissent and inspire others to mobilize. Today, the brutal regime of Bashar Al-Assad cannot escape the evidence of mass slaughter at the hands of his government due to the abundance of video clips instantly uploaded on to YouTube by demonstrators in Syria. The internet and social media avenues provide a multitude of tools for protestors in Syria to communicate with supporters outside the country, and to continue to mobilize against the Syrian population against the regime. Syria stands as a classic example of social media arming a marginalized majority with an ability to document the crimes of a dictatorship, and making a case for their grievances before the international community.

However, the use of social media as a tool for social movements has not been contained to North Africa and Middle East. In the case of the occupy movement in United States, social media has been used in similar ways to protest corporate greed, corruption, and concentrated political power on Wall Street. According to professor Leah Lievrouw of University of California-Los Angeles, social media has been a driving force behind the movement. Because of the existence of widespread usage of social media in the occupy movement, Lievrouw suggests that it is fundamentally different from other social justice movements of the past. “Lacking structured leadership, a single spokesperson and even a clear message, the Occupy movement has grown through the use of personal media and new technologies, sustained by participants’ own network of contacts and willingness to dive into the political fray” (UCLA Today). Movements in the past such as the civil rights struggle were top-down with a strong leadership deciding the agendas and activities for the movement. The occupy movement is qualitatively different, in that social media provides an opportunity for individual participants to influence the trajectory of the movement.

"Researchers who have studied ‘new’ social movements since the 1970s and ’80s have found that they differ from classical movements like the labor or civil rights movements in some important ways. Those earlier movements had a clear, top-down leadership structure, where a few key individuals at the top — a ‘vanguard’ — would formulate policy, strategy and tactics and send instructions down the line to the rank and file, who carried out orders" (UCLA Today). According to Lievrouw, the occupy movement is different because there are no “senders” and “receivers” of message that would work in a hierarchical leadership structure to carry out activism.

Both the occupy movement and the Arab Spring are similar in one obvious way. Aside from the fact that both utilized social media in a substantial way to supplement their tactics, both grew rapidly in a very short amount of time. As demonstrated by Neal Caren and Sarah Gaby of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (authors of Occupy Online: Facebook and the Spread of Occupy Wall Street), the Occupy Wall Street encampment began on September 17, 2011 and had spread across the country in a matter of one month. Facebook activity carried out by occupiers peaked on the 21st of October, with more than 175,000 users flooding the internet with newsfeeds, Facebook messages and linking videos. The report also suggests that “the number of Facebook Occupiers is approaching the number of online Tea Party activists” (Caren, Gaby). However, the “Tea Party had been active for more than a year,” while the occupy movement had been around for little more than a month. Furthermore, according to the report, “Facebook is a recruiting tool for bringing in new supporters and getting people to events” (Caren, Gaby). Because of this feature, Facebook as a social medium has proven to almost instantly mobilize direct action by participants, without vexing efforts like door-to-door campaigning for events and phone calls.

The use of social media in the occupy movement is similar to the Arab Spring in another respect. Social media did not help the public become dissatisfied with the status quo in America. The great recession of 2008 did the job of making people angry and disillusioned with the powers at be. Mass home foreclosures, unusually high rates of unemployment (disproportionately higher in big cities and amongst the youth), droves of recent college graduates filling underemployed positions, and an overall lack of confidence in large institutions made way for a lot of disgust. In this sense, social media served only as a conduit for outrage to be directed at Wall Street.

However, there is yet another way that the use of social media by occupiers is similar to the Arab Spring. Prior to the occupy movement, mainstream media in the United States did not focus much attention to the growing inequality and lack of opportunity that had been a mainstay since the recession began. “Before the Occupy Wall Street movement, there was little discussion of the outsized power of Wall Street and the diminishing fortunes of the middle class…The media blackout was especially remarkable given that issues like jobs and corporate influence on elections topped the list of concerns for most Americans.” (Yes Magazine, 2011). Occupiers had to rely on social media to bring their concerns to the forefront and organize because corporate owned media in the U.S. had refused to report on their behalf. In greater Middle East, mainstream media outlets like television, radio and print were either state owned or under heavy influence by the state, which is why they were banned from reporting the concerns and grievances of their people. In the case of both Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, social media was able to provide a space for a new politics to emerge. A politics that was critical of structures of power, and one that was inclusive of marginalized groups in both regions.

WORKS CITED

"Oxford Islamic Studies Online." Oxford University Press. Oxford University. Web. 24 June 2012. <http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/Public/focus/essay0611_social_media.html>

"New media driving Occupy movement, prof says." Wyer, Kathy. UCLA Today, 25 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 June 2012. <http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/information-studies-prof-new-media-225807.aspx>

Caren, Neal and Gaby, Sarah, Occupy Online: Facebook and the Spread of Occupy Wall Street (October 24, 2011). Available at SSRN: <http://ssrn.com/abstract=1943168 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1943168>

“Ten Ways the Occupy Movement Changes Everything.” Galder, Sarah van, Korten, David, Piersanti, Steve. 10 Nov. 2011. Web. 24 June 2012. <http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/ten-ways-the-occupy-movement-changes-everything>