A question that today sounds absurd, as everyone seems to know the answer to this redundant question. The fact actually is, everyone has their own interpretation of What A Computer is as they see it. The field of computers has seen such unprecedented growth that has quite changed the definition and use of computers as it were, specially with the silly forms it has taken today ranging from laptops to netbooks and now to tablet PCs - all of which have contributed their share in obliterating its importance and existence - the biggest factor of all being The Internet.
Today, a computer would more vastly be viewed as a "youngster's dream toy", a gadget that they are addicted to, that they use to surf the internet, a device that they can listen to songs on, view videos, store pictures, and more popularly - be connected using social networking. A computer has been reduced to a a device that no longer needs any prior experience or learning to operate it, quite in contrast to the past days.
Computer
But is this the real computer with its intended use? Not quite so. I look back into finding the answer that truly defines a computer that first came into being with a revolutionary debut.
Computers, when they first came into existence, were a very specialized field of work which needed training and skills to operate them and to put them to a productive use intended to help us make our tasks easier, save time and energy, and to achieve precision and accuracy that was humanly less possible to achieve. Having lived in the era of those evolutionary days of computers, I do feel sad looking at the play-gadgets that they have been reduced to. If one truly wants to see the power of computers, I strongly believe you need to isolate it from The Internet and view it for a while. What would you do with a computer that is not connected to the Internet? What use does it remain to the casual user then? The answer would more than exemplify the case I put forward here. I don't propose to say that The Internet is a useless technology - most certainly not - its one of the path breaking advances in the field of technology! But only to the extent of understanding the true potential of computers which gets overshadowed by the Web, we just need to view it from this aspect for a few moments!
A Computer is an extremely powerful machine. In simple terms the definition of a Computer would simply read as - A Computer is a machine that accepts an accumulation of raw data and sequential set of instructions, manipulates the raw data on the basis of the instructions and derives the final result as meaningful information for us.The raw data is the Input, which comprises of any unorganized set of basic facts such as names, numbers etc. The manipulation of data is called the Process. The derivation of the final result is called the Output.
This brings us to the three basic stages of computing - Input, Process and Output. In the same principle, we have the three basic structural components of a Computer - The Input Device, Central Processing Unit (CPU) and The Output Device.
Having now acquainted ourselves with What A Computer Is, in the next articles to follow, we try to look into these very components into a bit more detail which would lead us to the understanding the other common aspects of computers in a logical manner unadulterated by today's over simplified net-surf and entertainment devices that they have been made out to be.
What Is A Computer?
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