UBIQUITOUS NETWORKING
The most dramatic change in computing in the last five years has been the
astounding growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web. This interconnection of
millions of computers started modestly in the late 1960s by a government-funded project
called ARPANET. This refrigerator-sized computer was the "Interface Message
Processor"
("IMP")
Photo by Jessica Huynh
manufactured by
Bolt Beranek and Newman of Cambridge, Mass., as the communications pipe for
the
ARPANET, which started with only four nodes: mainframe computers at
Stanford,
UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Thirty years later,
even cell
phones can be nodes on the network.
At the dawn of the era of ubiquitous mobile computing, this virtual tour
appropriately
ends with an early ungainly example of mobile personal computing: Steve
Roberts'
computerized recumbent bicycle
BEHEMOTH
Photo by David Pace
(Big Electronic Human-Energized
Machine
...Only Too Heavy). In the 1980s, Steve logged
about 17,000 pedal-powered miles while sending email from a chorded
keyboard built
into the handlebars and reading responses on the heads-up display attached
to his
helmet. If it sounds like Steve was pedaling to the beat of a different
drummer, think
about him in a few years when every device you own is seamlessly connected
to the
Internet and you do email while in the shower.
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