As a Computer Science major I obviously have a special relationship with computing and technology in general. When you really think about it, computing dominates our lives. Warming up your food in a microwave? That’s computing. Walking up to and through an automatic door without giving a second glance? That’s computing. Drawing money from an ATM. Again, computing. All these these may seem ordinary, and by now they are pretty ordinary, our lives would be so drastically different if they never existed. I’m sure many people don’t stop to consider the history of things they are using now but as someone who is absorbed in the field, it is impossible not to think about just how much computing we use in our daily lives.
Before, when programming was more of a hobby than a career path for me, I thought technology was amazing, whether new or old. Older technology obviously has its charms because people of the time had to use what was available to them and yet they still managed to pave the way and lay the foundation for the advancements of today. Obviously newer technology is amazing too by virtue of the near-miraculous things we can achieve. Now that I have delved deeper into the field and it is no longer just a general interest, I find myself being even more amazed by everything. Now that I know the architecture of a computer, and instruction sets and memory and all these super complicated low-level things that go into the simplest of computers it is hard not to be in awe of how this stuff is even possible, how this stuff has progressed to the point where, as Michael said, it is almost impossible to know how everything works all at once. I am deeply appreciative of everybody who has come before me and excited to see what I, and everyone around me, can achieve all thanks to computing.