Mozammel Khan Sr. Hardware Design Engineer Nortel Networks, Toronto, Canada Email: mozammel@bpnetwork.ca Phone: 1 416 916-1558 If we always do what we have always done, we always get what we have always got. We must first improve our inputs, to improve our intended outputs. 1. Abstract The main objective of this white paper is to provide an overall idea on computer utilization in different aspects as well as prospect of human life and where and how we utilize computers in our daily life to be a successful person. 2. Motivation Computer now a day is the substitute of pencil and paper. All age people have an easy access to computer. This is the only commodity that is accepted in all aspect of human life. The title of this paper supposed to be Hi-Tech Revolution. But, computer is the backbone of Hi-Tech revolution and the term Computer itself is more popular to the people. That is why we chose the title. 3. Introduction Mechanical aids and calculating were known as antiquity. One of the ancient device, Abacus used by the ancient Egyptians as early as the sixth century B.C. Charles Babbge (1792-1871) was probably the first who built the general-purpose computer. The actual computer revolution began in the World War II. Eckert and J.W. Mauchly developed ENIAC in 1946 by using the vacuum tubes. Performance was very poor, and consumed enormous amount of electricity. The second-generation computer replaces the vacuum tubes by transistors in mid-1950s. That was a small revolution of miniaturization of computer. In the early 1970s, a young engineer Marcian Hoff of the small firm Intel put into the entire Central Processing Unit (CPU) of a computer on a single chip. Hoff s chips known as microprocessor. CPU is the brain of computer. There is no stopping of microelectronics revolution. Issue 3.0 White Paper Series Page 1 of 7
Chips take less space, saving in labor time, and materials, requires less maintenance. That is why, the chips were improved every year and one amazing fact is that, the development is still running in that speed. Chips are improving so much that they are able to perform more than 1 million instructions/second. The improvement of chips can be divided into four generations: 1. 8-bit microprocessor 2. 16-bit microprocessor 3. 32-bit microprocessor 4. 64-bit microprocessor Intel introduced 8-bit and 16-bit microprocessor and 1K-RAM in 1970s. Computer has the ability to store data in the RAM-memory developed with the development of microchips. The development of speed was necessary to keep up with the development of microchips. In 1981, Intel presented the 32-bit microprocessor and this was the big step in the development. In addition to the multiprocessing feature it also used a powerful technique, parallel processing, which is very useful in highly complex intelligence work. Intel was Co-operated by the IBM and supply 16-bit chips. In 1985, 32-bit chips were finally launched into market commercially. The Computer Aided Design/Engineering (CAD/CAE) systems and office systems in equal shares absorbed 32-bit processors. British Company Inmos also introduce 32-bit chips to a complete computer called Transputer. The use of parallel processing and Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) circuitry can achieve high process speed. No doubt, the fourth & fifth generation computer will put together all the technologies in chipmaking, memories, Computer Aided Design/Manufacturing (CAD/CAM), parallel processing, software, vision systems and speech recognition in order to create the intelligent talking, thinking machine of the future. Feature says what will happen... 4. Personal Computing The history of personal computer began with the invention of Altar microcomputer in 1975. IBM in 1981 first launched its Personal Computer for commercial market. After that many of the other company trying to develop it. They made PC s hardware. But hardware can do nothing by itself. To make the PC useful it requires application programs or software, sets of instructions called Operating System that tell the computer what to do. This is what personal computing. Software package like Visicalc play an important role to use the PC, but to make more effective operating system, a popular operating system was CP/M developed by digital research. Operating systems such as UNIX developed by AT &T and Bell lab, MS-DOS, Windows by Microsoft. Personal computer market can be divided into four in terms of uses: Home Business Education Scientific-Technical Issue 3.0 White Paper Series Page 2 of 7
Programming languages make it easier for people to communicate with machine by translating instructions into bits of 0s and 1s. Fortran is the first programming language developed by IBM in 1956 used mainly on mathematical and scientific problems. BASIC has been widely adapted in schools, colleges and personal computer programs. COBOL is extensively used in business applications. Today C, C++, Visual BASIC and Pascal are mostly used, but AI-projects (Artificial Intelligence) use LISP, PROLOG, Oracle and other programs widely. The most important application programs are Word Processors, Spreadsheets. Today you may find variety of software those are useful for many purposes. Home computers were used mostly to play games. They had no keyboard, usually connect to a normal TV set and only good for playing. Day by day video games become disappeared because of personal computers (PC). With the extensive use of PC, it is possible to have a complete new form of working, the home office. That means the employee has a computer and it connect to the office computer, then can do all of his work at home and when he wants. With the home workers, companies can safe money, time, space and energy. Another field where the computer extensively used is school. Every school has a computer-science line; and other subjects like computer language. 5. Telecom & Computer Communication is the vital and essential part of developed society. Not only for the stock market or banking, it is very important to know about every thing as fast as possible. In our all day live, we want to be well informed. Few decades ago, transport of information was very slow and expensive. Nobody can imagine that one day be possible to talk to someone few thousand kilometers away. Telegraph brought into first change in communication in code form. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented telephone. With that we can send spoken word from one place to another place through conductive media. Digital communication replaces analog systems. Analog systems are slow, low capacity, and translation (Modulator and Demodulator) is required before data transmitted on the network. Digital exchange has no need for such equipment of services. Computer revolution brought a big change in telecommunication. Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN), and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) able to handle all kind of services. That can be transmitted in digital form, voice, facsimile, even pictures. In fact, telephone will become a computer terminal. ISDN operate on a worldwide basis, it would no matter where your terminal is located. Canada s salesmen in USA could call-up his boss in Toronto and discuss a graph about the sales. There are many new inventions besides the digital telephones that make telecommunication more useful and much faster. Use of computer becomes obvious in the: Cable TV Cellular radio Satellite communication PC based Internet phone Internet & Electronic mail Fiber optic communication Issue 3.0 White Paper Series Page 3 of 7
Cable TV is used to get high-quality TV with many channels. Cable TV made it possible to get internal broadcasting. It is also become possible to make small station, for example-education, sport or music. Cellular radio is one of the wireless communication systems, which allows mobile telephones. In this system, area is divided into zones. Radio station transmits and receives signals from the mobile and moving around. Satellite communication also allows everybody to get many channels. Satellite communication is more powerful than transmitting TV channel. International telephone system uses this system. With this system signal can easily send over oceans and mountains. New type of communication is Electronic Mail. Writing E-mail is like writing a letter. It is used over network. To make conferencing easier, the system of video conferencing is developed. In this system, everybody stays in office and sees other participants on a TV screen. The fiber optics is made of pure glass no wider than a human hair that can carry thousands of telephone lines. It is faster, lighter, cheaper and not affected by electric field. Conventional copper wire will be replaced by fiber optics in near feature. 6. Factories of the Feature High-tech revolution, especially the computer, dramatically change our factories structure, which also influence the way of our live and work. Few decades ago, there were only two types of production line i.e. conventional or labor intensive and process control production line. With the first production line, most of the task had done manually and with the second, all the task was preprogrammed and done by the machine and worker control the quality, packaging and overall development of the product. Like chemicals, plastics, rubber and steel material manufacturing companies were used process control. This is called the first generation automation. In 1797, Henry Mudslay designed the first screw-cutting lathe machine. In the early 1950s, the numerical controlled machine was introduced. At that time machine runs on a program that was punched hole on a paper card which control the movement of the machine. To make any change was very difficult, thus machine was inflexible. In the early 1960s, Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine was developed. With that machine we can store data and design in its memory, making it possible to produce a large range of goods in one machine. In the early 1980s with the invention of microchips, robots were used in the factory to minimize the labor cost and competition. Not only final products, also development of products are now supported by computers. Computer Aided Design/Engineering and (CAD/CAE) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) are extensively used for design, simulation, testing, and prototyping of the new products. CAD/CAM needs powerful computer. Issue 3.0 White Paper Series Page 4 of 7
7. Electronic Office Many years ago people started their live structured and systematic way, and doing business. They used some characters, symbol to maintain their records. Probably that was the first time to start office work. The structure of the organization and the style of office work gradually change with the computer revolution. Through the use of computer and increasing importance of information, today more than 60% of the labor forces in the developed countries work in electronic office. In the early 1970s, the new devices such as photocopier, PBX, calculator, offset printing machines were introduced in the office work and help to improve the quality of the office work. The big changes started with the invention of the electronic computer and development in data processing. The change is the transition from the paperwork to the electronic office. At the beginning computer was used as a better type writer, now the computer power increase so much that almost everything we can do with a computer. Some people think, use of computer, office will become paperless and some people fear that they would loose their job. But the development shows that their idea is wrong. Computer increases the quality of work. Computer can preserve many amounts of data in a precise form rather than manual. PBX s and data hubs, Tele-copiers are replaced by multimedia computer. Photocopier already starts to replace by the computer network system. Through network system we do not need to copy of a data or instruction on paper, it can be seeing on the computer screen. 8. Computer and Money Money is the petrol of life (Ref 1). So, proper and efficient handling of money is an important issue to keep the life smooth. Computer is the vital commodity helps to do so. The whole commerce is based on information such as: - Information about the prices Information about the payment. Information about goods and services Information about the storage and transportation Banking is being deeply affected by the information technology revolution. In fact, banks were the first commercial users of mainframe computers. This was because; routine financial transactions were particularly influence to automation. In this regard market introduced: Home banking Automated Teller Machine (AMT) Automated Talking Machine (ATM) Electronic Co-operate Management Cash-less shopping by electronic funds transfer at the point-of-sale Issue 3.0 White Paper Series Page 5 of 7
Banks are now open plan, with easy chair and more relaxed informal atmosphere. Customers can pop in at weekends and outside the normal office hour by AMT and Internet. They open 24 hours a day. The latest in AMT are talking machine, which answer simple quarries using recorded massages, and video AMTs which show visuals of talking heads captured on video disc. Bank stuff in feature will have a complete picture of every customer s financial affairs at their fingertips. Another important new customer service offered by the banks is the electronic co-operate management. Foreign exchange dealers and brokers also used all-electronic dealing rooms, like financial information services. Electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) equipment is used in retailing. When the checkout operator passes the printed on each item over the laser scanner built into the EOPS terminal, the code is read and the information transmitted to the store s computer and simultaneously printed paper comes out. With the home banking system no need to go physically to the bank, you can perform this deal through your computer terminal. Automatic process is quite efficient in use even on small batches and it can easily shift to new directions if needed. It reduces lot of money by replacing the workers. Robots can work continuously without any break with a high productivity. We can save worker from the toxic, radiant substances and dirty work by the use of robot. The main risk of putting robots on the floor beside the human worker is that people feel that the robot has taken the place of former companions or colleagues. Skill-ness of the worker gradually decreases, because they will do nothing other than pushing some red, yellow and green buttons. As the productivity proportion is very high, with the same time of trouble automatic company will loss huge amount of money rather than manually operated company. Finally I must say, factory of feature will give us precious and quality of product to lead our live. But question arises, if people do not have work or assignment how they kill their time. If per capita income sharply reduce due to jobless, how the mass people afford... Computers and bar codes control supermarket checkout lanes, banking can be accomplished over the Internet, and worldwide financial transactions can be completed almost instantaneously. As we embark upon the next millennium, we will continue to notice drastic changes and growth opportunities for jobs in computer related services. 9. Merits & Demerits of Computer High-tech society has its good and its bad side. Higher use of computer dramatically reduces the need for manpower. So, normally question arise what will happen to our jobs. While high-tech it-self makes few jobs, it is hard to say what will come in future. Already a trend to part-time work is creating a new group of second class Citizen. Employers are welcome part-time low cost labor as because low paid part-time workers do not get any health care, life insurance and pension. On the other hand, high-tech crime seems to become a big problem. Computerized fraud includes fractious loans, unauthorized lines of credit, and other forms of transaction manipulation. Issue 3.0 White Paper Series Page 6 of 7
Some people say, higher computer use degrades the quality of work life; reduce job satisfactions and d-skill jobs, people will get isolated from the society. Other says life of the feature will be better than past. The truth of course; lies somewhere in between the two. 10. Activities to overcome situation Increases in technology and automation have changed the nature of the work we do, replacing many manual labor jobs with computer-related occupations. As our values have shifted from production and manufacturing to technology and knowledge-based assignment, the careers people select have changed due to the changing needs of our society. Newcomers and graduates who have prepared themselves well through their job related network, information exchange and college coursework, will make a smooth transition from academia to industry. In fact, we need clear career interests and outstanding preparation to motivate prospective employers (Ref 2). With unclear career goals, poor academic records and marginal work histories will discover that job hunting is more challenging and laborious than those who have clear career goals. The bulk of new job growth will occur in industries that provide technologies, computer, finance and insurance. By the year 2006, those will be the largest and fastest growing major industrial sectors, and are projected to provide millions new jobs. Beside carrier development, we must work in an integrated way to build-up a long-term strategic platform for growing business community within our society (Ref-1). 11. Conclusion The Computer revolution may divide the society into two groups: a highly skilled and an unskilled. The question is whether high-tech society will see information and its power increasingly in centralized or decentralized. Future will say, situations affected by computer will good or bad. The overall intention of this white paper is to provide the initial motivation to our community to go forward smoothly as the technology changes. Most of the topics we discussed are well known to all of us in different way. We simply try to rearrange in a systematic way and hope this will be helpful to our community. No doubt, this is really an important issue. We are quite sure; there are many experts in our community, who can help us by providing more details valuable and useful information. We need your help and active participation in addressing this issue. Issue 3.0 White Paper Series Page 7 of 7