 So in this lecture, we'll be talking about the essential computer concepts, you know, what makes a computer a computer and Just immediately even getting into that, you know Your textbook if you pull it out, you know, what's the definition of computer? Well Here's the definition and electronic device that accepts information and instructions from user and manipulates the information According to the instructions and displays the information in some way stores the information for trivial later Okay, what does that mean? So if we think about a computer if we think about our smartphones our laptops our tablets Even the smart watches that we have nowadays, you know What we're looking at is this electronic device this thing that takes electricity and We interact with it in some way we type on the keyboard we touch on our touch pads You know, we interact with it and then it takes that it processes that information It does something to that and then it spits something back out for us so that we Get some instant feedback that we understand and then just in case, you know, if I power it down It needs to remember that information. So it stores that information for retrieval later Well, we've got a few different styles of computers, you know, we have the basic desktop This is what I'm coming to you talking right now on these are the old fashions, you know Some of you might actually have a desktop that you're Viewing this on right now Some of you have may have moved on to something like the laptop Well, the laptop all it did was it took all of that stuff we had inside our computer And it just made it smaller and so even before we get to that. Let's think about the desktop computer. So You were to open up that desktop computer you would get something like this You'd get What's known as a motherboard and all this motherboard is is it just kind of holds the circuit in place so that When I turn on electricity this thing Routes it into the correct ways, but I want you to focus in on This guy right here now it looks empty right now However That is where we store this guy this tiny little guy doesn't look like much even on the screen right now We flip it over This is known as the processor now the processor This is actually one of the most expensive items on the computer Because it is actually considered the brain it is considered the CPU it does all of the mathematical Calculations so all those ones and zeros that we talk about when we get into binary conversion That's what this guy does. That's all it does and that's actually why it has so many of those pins on the back if you took a second you can pause the video if you might you know there we are and Count those now All right, good So if we look at that there there were about 64 pins on the back of that thing because that is known as a 64-bit processor now when we get into binary conversion that'll make a little bit more sense But like I said We basically took this giant motherboard and we started to shrink things down because obviously you know people want to be able To take their computers wherever with them and the desktop computer. It's a little difficult to do that That's where we Sorry That's where we get this idea of the laptop computer. It basically just started to Shrink everything down and I say on the slides, you know, so I say it says it's going old-fashioned Well, why do I say that? Because we've now moved into this age of hand-held computers How many of you guys own a tablet? How many of you guys own a touchscreen phone? These are becoming very mainstream and just a fun fact Even if you don't have a touchscreen phone, you still have a smart phone the reason why is because that Phone has inside of it some program that allows you to store things like your phone book And you know, there are a little text messaging things that you can do as well So it is still technically a computer with a phone attached We have other types. We have things like a standalone computer. The standalone computers are basically your atm's your self-checkout lines So go to Harris teeter go to Lowe's, you know, if you're like me, I don't like to interact with people I'm a computer guy, but I go through the self-checkout line. Why it's faster in my opinion. It's easier, but That's a computer in the sense that if we look at the definition again It accepts user input. Well, let's say for example, here's a Diet coke I'm drinking right now. It's got a barcode on it. Well that barcode right there. That's what I scan That's my input to the computer. It reads that in it processes that information It looks into its database. It looks up that UPC code and it finds the Number amount to that and it continues to ring those up for every item I scan until it's ready to be checked out until I give it another input that says Let's proceed to the payment process. So standalone computers. They are kind of running our worlds We also are now moving into this world of wearable technology and this is very exciting, you know Google glasses or some of you may even have smartwatches like the Samsung or the pebble Fitbits for example, all of them basically are now becoming very very more prominent in our society and it's only going to continue to grow You know, if you take a look at say under armor for example under armor starting to come out with rash guards and compression workout shirts that have just a little kind of Tony Stark iron man little thingy that goes right here in your chest and All it does is it measures out your your breathing your your Heart rate and it's a computer that we wear It's actually kind of exciting because you can see if that's where we are now think about in the future You know, it's not going to be far too long before we start wearing LCD T-shirts and don't steal that idea because I plan on working on it when it actually becomes possible So we also have finally something known as our super computers Well, the super computer that's actually sort of the big honcho Everything runs on super computers. Think about if you have an iOS phone. You have an iPhone You know, you might do Siri. Well, how do you? connect to Siri should be told you're not actually Holding a miniature version of Siri in your phone You're actually connecting to a massive server Somewhere out there in the world that does all of that computational process for you understanding, you know How we talk to the computer doing something known as natural language processing to figure out the words that are coming out of my Mouth, you know, how do you understand what I'm talking about? Well, we still have to do that with the computer. It's actually very difficult the super computers allow that for us another example is say for example Watson Watson as you guys can see from the slides Technically right now what Watson is doing is helping work cancer research and actually, you know helping Africa You know figure out a lot of the logistics of say water placement there's a little video of It's so there we are There's a little video of it playing Jeopardy and actually it did really well on Jeopardy So if you're inclined take a look at the link, I'll go ahead and give you a second All right, hopefully you're taking a look at that link and you found it hilarious so Now that we've got all these computers Doesn't matter which one you focus in on Ultimately They all run something known as an operating system and I'm gonna even take a step back Let's look at something like this This is known as the Arduino Uno Now the Arduino Uno a very small tiny Micro computer It doesn't looks like that motherboard that I showed you guys a little earlier But one of the things that I have here is known as an LED like emitting diode Well, if I kind of plug that in right there, let me get it right boom Right now. It's not gonna do anything. It kind of is just sitting there But this has an operating system. It's a very very primitive operating system But I've designed it so that all it's going to do is when I turn this on when I give it electricity through this guy It's gonna route through it's gonna go to its processor this guy right here Which is doing all the thinking and it's gonna tell it to turn on this light So give me just a second. Let me turn that on And so this is an operating system We take a look There we go. All right, I got it waiting for 10 seconds So in about eight more seconds, it's going to come back on and that's all I told this thing to do It's just to come on every 10 seconds. So it's actually really interesting because This guy right here is all our computers are doing that's all they do when we work with an operating system Windows OS X iOS Android Linux whatever you're using doesn't actually matter What's actually happening is all those just allow us to have Multitasking this idea of multitasking is what gives me the ability to record a video have a PowerPoint presentation running over here in the background and Still actually have sort of my browser open right now So this is where we start to get into a little bit of the components So I've already shown you a lot of the Hardware side of things hardware. That's the architecture of the computer That's literally the circuitry going on to make sure that I can take power and turn it into My screen then we get into software and software is actually where we're going to focus in a lot Later on in the semester when we start getting into Microsoft Word Excel PowerPoint access Those are all software and the weird thing about software is it's intangible meaning I Can't actually show you software. I can't I can't explain software Because all software is is a set of instructions. It's literally me telling this thing To turn on its red light Every 10 seconds that was software that I wrote for that purpose So it is a little bit on that interesting side of things