Evolution of Computing

Computers and computing emerged within a lifetime and completely changed our world. Although their history is brief, the change they precipitated has been rapid and constant. Today’s world would be unimaginably different without these machines. Not necessarily worse, but certainly slower, static, disconnected, and poorer. One has to look back to the steam engine in the nineteenth century or electricity in the early twentieth century to find technologies with similar rapid and far-reaching effects. This chapter briefly describes the evolution of computing and highlights how its growth is closely tied to concerns of digital humanism.