Inventions Important Computer Science Inventions

Inventions

Important computer science inventions

Invention 1: The birth of video games

Video games were one of the first ways ordinary computer users, including children, began to develop an interactive relationship with modern technology in the home and other leisure-time contexts. Video games were sensory experiences in space and time, and unlike world processing games they were not wholly linear. "Whereas a word-processor's function is an abstract concept that can remain essentially intact from platform to platform, a video game is defined within the hardware technology of the platform for which it is designed. The choice to utilize hardware elements like vector vs. rastor monitors, audio synthesizers vs. digitally samplers, and whether or not to incorporate video playback devices (i.e., laserdisc, CD-ROM, and DVD) defines a video game as much as the software itself does. Since a video game is a sensory experience, the sound, the visual elements, and the interface that the player uses to interact with the game cannot be divorced from the programmed logic and instruction set that provides the experience" (Stahl 2005). The complexity of the systems and the frequent lack of compatibility of new systems also generated high levels of profitability for new models and a great deal of excitement amongst users searching for the 'next big thing' in gaming.

Video games also increased ordinary users' level of comfort with technology. For a video game to be truly a game, it must be interactive, and deploy sophisticated technology that delights and assaults the senses and creates a virtual world in a humanly recognizable fashion. The imaginations of game creators would be constantly taxed and stretched by the medium since the first video game's conception in 1952, in a primitive form of Tic-Tac-Toe (Stahl 2005). Commercial interest in making television interactive only really began in earnest in the mid 1960s. In 1972 a machine called the Odyssey that could be hooked up to a television was born, and the mid-70s saw the birth of Atari's home and arcade versions of Pong (Stahl 2005).

Video games soon had tie-ins with movies, most notably "Star Wars," paving the way for later integration of multimedia sources in marketing (Stahl 2005). In the 1980s, although it is often called a 'lull' period of interest, the evolution of 3D space in games was born to make gaming more lifelike than ever before, and created games that were not simply 'shooting' fests but actually had more human and personality-driven aspects. The various Gameboys, the Sony Playstation, and Xboxes that have come into being have all stood as testimony to the centrality of gaming in the lives of many people, old and young, as they became the 'hot toys' to get a Christmas year after year. A criticism is that technology of video games is that they makes people more sedentary and violent -- but games such as "Dance Revolution" attempt to answer such criticism by providing nonviolent and physically active games.

Invention 2: The birth of the Internet

The challenge of getting a message quickly from point a to point B. has motivated the creation of foot messengers, the Pony Express, the U.S. Postal Service, Morse Code, the telegraph and telephone -- and the Internet. The Internet as an idea was first born in 1958 when researchers at the Bell Labs invented a modem that could convert digital signals to electrical analog signals and back, enabling computers to communicate with one another ("History of the Internet," Computing Science Chronology, 2005).

The beginnings of the revolution in communication technology between computers would later enable ordinary individuals to communicate with people they had never met far away, transform modern commerce by enabling even small vendors to sell goods internationally over the Internet, and allow people to telecommute or remain connected to work and friends 24-7. Information through the Internet can be published by anyone and accessed with a click. Information access no longer requires tedious research in officially published library volumes authored by experts. The Internet makes life faster and more democratic.