The Study of Tech
Surely Technology or tech is much too wide a subject to be included in the table of IT elements? Aren’t computers, the Internet, mobile & smart devices all examples of technology?
Well, yes, it is a broad topic and by habit, if not necessity, we are interested and sometimes a bit obsessed with familiar end-user technologies and applications in our everyday lives. They often promise a lot but can be frustrating, confusing and ultimately expendable.
Today’s whizzy gadgets and smart phones will be obsolete in about 15 minutes (if not already), so I want to try to define and classify some of the types of underlying technology that are of interest in the modern digital, connected, mobile, IT world that we all live and work in.
Some ancient history
The word root ‘tekhne’ is Greek for art or craft, so tech-nology is the study of the arts and crafts, but more recently it is applied to a more specific branch of knowledge relating to engineering, science and especially computers. I don’t need to digress into the world of the slate, abacus, plough or spinning jenny to tell you how important technology has always been to humans, and how we have always used our acquired knowledge and skills to use the materials around us.
It is worth bearing in mind that any tool, or the application of human ingenuity, is just that; a tool to be used or misused as the creator or designer intended, or more importantly as the user demands. However much we give computers human, or human-like, traits or even personalities they are still essentially dumb instruments that exist to serve our needs. I will touch on Artificial Intelligence briefly later.
For the love of tech
With apologies for the unavoidable list!
Computers
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The hardware (Central Processing Unit) and software that provides the main processing power and control logic for computers. Only 50 years ago all computers lived in big cabinets*, or ‘main-frames’, served by peripherals to provide power, keep everything cool, and provide data storage, and various input and output devices.
(*Ed. and in some cases still does) From the 1970’s onwards came successive generations of smaller, self-contained and eventually portable mini-computers, personal computers (PCs), and micro-computers with more powerful processors, also known as integrated circuits or ‘chips’. External peripherals (see later) gave way to built-in screens (monitors), keyboards, and disk drives to read and write to external storage media. This is still the image for a typical computer, although this is changing and becoming a more confusing picture…read on. |
Smart devices
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This category includes tablets, e-readers & smart phones, normally with some built-in wireless capability. Any computer-like device that is designed to be portable, normally with an integrated input device, say a keypad or touch screen.
These devices started as specialised machines with dedicated operating systems and chips – as opposed to a general-purpose PC for example – but with the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and then the iPad in 2010, the bottom end of the PC/laptop market and top-end smart devices are increasingly blurred together. (Ed. apologies for the Apple bias, but they do provide useful benchmarks for some of the more obvious paradigm shifts, other ground-breaking devices are available!) In industry and commercial environments as well as consumer electronics, the static desktop machine is giving ground to the portable, or possibly the dock-able smart device. |
Smart TVs and game consoles
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Before you sit back and think, well that’s quite straightforward then(!); computers are becoming smart phones, and tablets are becoming laptops; there is a new frontline in the battle for your consumer electronics dollar and your edutainment time and attention span.
TVs and games consoles are now smarter and more connected with the rest of the digital world and with each other; including, for example, email, digital storage, video streaming, internet connectivity, interactively & apps. The latter is now a feature of Apple TV – oops product placement again! Playing games and watching TV are no longer standalone activities; they provide multi-way personalised communication channels and portals for other services. |
Peripherals
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These electronic gadgets and tools are literally on the periphery of the computer, and may include, for example, connected or wireless devices for external storage, keyboard, headphones, speakers etc. However many built-in hardware features and software applications (‘apps’) that a computer or a smart device has there remains a desire from the discerning user to plug-in other specialist, higher-quality/fidelity, branded or new stuff.
When I say plug-in, this could be via a connector such as the ubiquitous USB port (Universal Serial Bus – see Networks later) or increasingly wirelessly, and that now includes cloud-based memory & contactless (induction) charging. |
Embedded technology
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As it says on the tin, essentially any of above installed (or physically embedded) somewhere else, in another object, or an animal or a person, to provide augmented (Augmented Reality) or enhanced capabilities. As we get more attached to our watches, virtual reality googles, and ‘phone headsets etc. the door is ajar for a true synergy of man and machine…although the six million dollar man is some way off, and probably a lot more expensive!
Everything from your fridge to your car, industrial process controllers, traffic lights, alarm systems & wearable technology use some form of microprocessor to gather information, make decisions, provide status information. When a device talks to other devices over the web then we have the Internet of Things. |
Telephony
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The world has moved on a lot from analogue phone systems. Although modems, fixed landlines, copper wire and old style exchanges still exist, the world is moving towards digital exchanges, fibre-optics, mobile, streamed video and voice-over-IP, that is, using the internet as the carrier rather the phone network, as used in Skype and FaceTime. |
Servers
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This is a term for any computer that provides a particular service to a user or a client system, hence client-server systems. Servers can provide a large number of specialist functions, often configurable with systems software. Including:
– Data storage (database), although there are also dedicated storage devices both solid state and removable & rewritable media such as disks or memory sticks (remember them!) – Website hosting, where the web content (the words and pictures) are stored and back-end or server-side processing takes place. – Network messaging hubs (see next section). – Firewalls, as the name suggests provide a secure buffer (software and hardware) between unauthorised users and your private network or sensitive data. |
Routers/hubs/switches
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These are families of devices that convert, receive and transmit digital signals. Hidden from the end-user accessing a web browser or application can be a massively complicated configuration of specialised hardware and software rules (protocols) that enable the routing of messages and processing of requests. It doesn’t just happen by magic.
According to Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law:
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Mobile/wireless
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This is covered by a separate IT Element.
Although less visible and audible than earlier direct or dial-up connections, there is still a need to convert data in various forms such as letters & numbers (characters), images, sound & video into strings of digitised binary information…and back again. Wireless technologies provide many different ways to transmit that same digital data via an electromagnetic carrier (that is, without visible means of support!), and that includes Wi-Fi, your mobile phone GPRS, 3G or 4G, radio frequency, even light. The flashing box that comes from your broadband supplier performs some of these functions – confusingly also referred to as a hub – as do/did the noisy bleeping and squawking modems that you may remember from the early days of the internet and the web. |
Network
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Networks are configurations of all the above devices using wireless technologies, copper wire or fibre-optic cables to link the devices (nodes) together. There is also a need for specialist messaging software to ensure that every device that needs to communicate can do so, originally on a hard-wired fixed channel or ‘bus’
It’s worth mentioning some special types of network here; the internet, the web, and the cloud. Why special? Unlike previous more-or-less fixed networks that were owned and managed by one or more participants, the inter-network is always growing, has no roadmap (network diagram) or owner/s…the cloud metaphor is perfect to illustrate the amorphous nature of the beast, but underneath all the other technologies are still there making everything happen. |
There’s nothing new under the sun
The above classifications may seem arbitrary*, but they do allow existing and most new stuff to be understood for what they are, as extensions or incremental improvements on what went before.
(*Ed. that’s because they are!)
However, there are new technologies and cutting-edge science (and some fringe pseudo-sciences) that have the potential to redefine the current model of how familiar things behave, how we live and work, so-called paradigm shifts or discontinuities.
Where for example do Artificial Intelligence, neural networks and organic computers fit in? What if telepathy, telekinesis and teleportation were possible? These are not so much arts and crafts as magic…see earlier quote…and again we have the Greeks to thank for the prefix ‘tele’ meaning, “at a distance, far off, far away, far from” – although maybe not too far away?
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