Course Description
Introduces students to the history of digital computers, from their nineteenth-century antecedents to the cutting-edge technologies of the twenty-first century. Students will learn about the technologies, personalities, and businesses behind the rise of Silicon Valley, the internet, the video game industry, artificial intelligence, and other applications of modern computing.
Athena Title
History of Computing
Prerequisite
Any HIST course or ENGL 1101 or ENGL 1101E or ENGL 1101S or ENGL 1102 or ENGL 1102E or ENGL 1102S or POLS 1101 or POLS 1101E or POLS 1101H or POLS 1101S
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
- By the end of this course, students will be able to arrive at conclusions about the history of computing and AI gathering and weighing evidence, logical argument, and listening to counter argument.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to write stylistically appropriate papers and essays. Students will be able to analyze ideas and evidence, organize their thoughts, and revise and edit their finished essays.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to identify how the history of computing, the internet, and AI shaped diverse social and cultural attitudes toward technology, modernity, and social responsibility, encouraging them to understand diverse worldviews and experiences.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to apply appropriate methodological approaches to their analysis of primary sources and to organize their evidence to show historical continuities and discontinuities.
Topical Outline
- Week 1: Nineteenth-Century Origins: Lovelace, Boole, Babbage
- Week 2: Early Analog Computers and Information Processing
- Week 3: Enigma: Cryptography and Computers in WWII
- Week 4: Computers and the Cold War
- Week 5: Programmers: Women as Computers
- Week 6: IBM and the Business Mainframe: Toward System 360
- Week 7: Computers and the Counterculture: Geeks, Hackers, Phreaks
- Week 8: Steve Jobs, Apple, and Personal Computing
- Week 9: Bill Gates, Microsoft, and Monopoly
- Week 10: ARAPNET to Internet
- Week 11: Pong and Beyond: The Rise of the Video Game
- Week 12: Digital Languages: The Software Revolution
- Week 13: Thinking Machines: Artificial Intelligence
- Week 14: The New Giants: Facebook, Google, Twitter
- Week 15: Cyberwarfare and the Digital Battlefield
Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes
Analytical Thinking
The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.
Communication
The ability to effectively develop, express, and exchange ideas in written, oral, interpersonal, or visual form.
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
