COMM-151 Midterm Suggested Questions
How many cards per day could the Hollerith Tabulating Machine process? (Hint: Lecture 4 slides)
7000 cards a day
What form of communication provided quick and asynchronous text-based communication? (Hint: Lecture 7 slides)
What directly led to the World Wide Web, it is a result of what prior invention? (Hint: Gihring 2016)
It was a result of the Internet Gopher
Whose program later became the de facto standard of the Arpanet? What was it about this program that made it so special? (Hint: Hafner, Katie. 2001)
John Vittal created the MSG program, which included both a Delete command and an Answer feature that enabled a recipient to reply to a message easily
What is the equivalent of the Dynabook today? (Hint: Lecture 7 slides)
Kindle/iPad
What are network effects? What is an example of something becoming susceptible to network effects? (Hint: Reimer, Jeremy. 2012)
Network Effects: the value of the good or service to a potential customer is dependent on the number of customers already owning that good or using that service Apple products are susceptible to network effects (have the same applications and can easily connect to one another)
What did the PC meter measure? (Hint: Manjoo, Farhad. 2009)
PC Meter: a focus group of a few thousand people installed an application that would silently track everything they did online Steve Coffey and his colleagues would analyze that data to estimate audience sizes on the Web
Explain what the Usenet was and what the role of operators in the usage of this system. (Hint: Lecture 6 slides)
The Usenet was an asynchronous worldwide bulletin board system (Messages posted to a local version of the discussion would be copied to other copies worldwide, so everyone eventually saw all the messages) Initially dominated by "cartel" of operators who provided most of the bandwidth (Acted as gatekeepers of acceptable and unacceptable new groups)
What technology did Tim Berners-Lee create that connects all the information on the internet through hyperlinks? (Hint: Gihring, Tim. 2016)
The World Wide Web
What issue did H.G. Wells hope that a "Permanent World Encyclopedia" would address? (Hint: Française, August, 1937)
Wells hoped this "Permanent World Encyclopaedia" would supply humanity with a common understanding and the conception of a common purpose and of a commonweal. And its creation was a way to world peace that can be followed without any very grave risk of collision with the warring political forces and the vested institutional interests of today. The assembling and distribution of knowledge is extremely ineffective, universities are unwilling to take on relevant topics etc.
When unit sales are graphed using the logarithmic scale, rank the following technological devices from fastest to slowest rise in sales: computers, tablets, smartphones.
Smartphones, tablets, computers
Describe at least two of the features added to improve telephones after their invention in 1876 as detailed by Robert G. Beason. (Hint: Lecture 5 slides)
Speakerphone (hands-free talking) and volume control
According to the article by Bush (1945), the theoretical device "memex" was devised to solve what issue people face? (Hint: Bush, Vannevar. 1945)
Technology had increased transmission speed and permanence of stored info, but people were increasingly unable to search effectively - Spent a lot of time looking for relevant info - Can't retrieve info readily, even after we've looked at it before
Which icon/symbol did Tomlinson use to denote the separation between the name of the user and the name of the machine used for emails? (Hint: Hafner, Katie. 2001)
The @ icon
What is the name of the first personal computer invented in the 1970s? (Hint: Reimer, Jeremy. 2012)
The Altair 8800
What machine was considered the most significant intellectual achievement of the 19th century? (Hint: Lecture 2 Slides)
The Analytical Engine
What was the first engine design that met criteria for the modern general purpose computer? (Hint: Lecture 2 slides)
The Analytical Engine
What invention was the predecessor to the World Wide Web, online messaging systems, and Twitter? (Hint: Gilbertson, Scott. 2010)
The BBS (bulletin board system)
What important device overruled the old FCC Tariff Number 132 and what was the device used for? (Hint: Lecture 5 slides)
The Carterfone overruled the old FCC Tariff Number 132; Connected the phone lines to a radio, so two people could have a conversation over the radio; Helped establish that the telecom system wasn't ruled by telecom companies; specifically enabled modems to be popular
What was the first fully electronic computer and what then almost matched its power? (Hint: Lecture 5 slides)
The ENIAC was the first fully electronic computer (1946) The microprocessor almost matched the ENIAC
What was the Hypercard used for and what did it include? (Hint: Lecture 7 slides)
The Hypercard was an offline tool used to easily make interactive hyperlinked documents - Included an extremely intuitive programming and user interface design tool, easy database and document management system, and simple multimedia authoring environment
What is the name of the "Historic Machine" and where is it located? (Hint: Lecture 5 slides)
The Interface Message Processor (IMP) - located in the Kleinrock Center in Boelter - Packet switching node used to interconnect participant networks to the ARPANET - First packet-router
What software was introduced in the early 90s by Mark McCahill and Farhad Anklesaria that allows users to search the internet and retrieve information anywhere in the world? (Hint: Gihring, Tim. 2016)
The Internet Gopher
What was the name of the hypertext navigation scheme that preceded the Web? (Hint: Lecture 7 slides)
The Internet Gopher
What is a gopher and how does it work? (Hint: Gihring, Tim. 2016)
The Internet Gopher was a downloadable interface that allowed users to search the Internet, retrieving information linked to it from anywhere in the world
Explain one of the main reasons why Gopher lost traction compared to the World Wide Web despite becoming the "first viral software"? (Hint: Gihring, Tim. 2016)
The U killed adoptions by trying to force licensing, and many felt betrayed In 1994, modem speeds doubled, and the interminable rendering of images on the Web — once dubbed the World Wide Wait — greatly accelerated PCs began to be sold with these faster modems built in
What breakthrough made the Intel silicon chip so important? (Hint: Time Magazine Staff. 1978)
Because its program was on a different chip, the microprocessor could be "taught" to do any number of chores. All that had to be done was to substitute a tiny program chip with fresh instructions.
What is the name of the first personal Website created by Justin Hall, where it mainly involved what we call "blogging" today? (Hint: Manjoo, Farhad. 2009)
links.net
What attachment did AT&T attempt to ban and what was its function? (Hint: Lecture 5 Slides)
AT&T tried to ban the Hush-a-phone - A device designed to attach to the transmitter of a telephone to reduce noise pollution and increase privacy
What is the term "modem" short for, and what is its purpose? (Hint: Lecture 7 slides)
"Modem" stands for modulator-demodulator and it converts data to audio tones.
Why did they have a hard time getting people to use email? (Hint: Lecture 7 Slides, Hafner 2001)
- ARPAnet restricted email usage to "official" business and the interface was horrible - Few people had email in the first place, and it was expensive to have - Network effects
What are the three criteria that classify modern general-purpose computers, which were also met by Babbage's Analytical Machine? Briefly explain each criterion. (Hint: Lecture 1 Slides)
- Arithmetic logic unit - Control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops - Integrated memory
What was the biggest issue in using only a single-modem system that people would dial into? (Hint: Lecture 7 slides, slide 14)
- BBS used traditional phone lines to log in to remote computers, meaning that if you wanted to dial in to a BBS out of your area, you'd be looking at long-distance charges from the phone company. Consequently, early BBSs were very locally oriented systems, but before too long the limitations gave birth to phone phreaking and other hacks - Often, only one person could access them at a time because only one modem is available (we no longer use dial-in modems)
Describe one advantage Otlet's version of hypertext had over today's Web. (Hint: Wright, 2008)
- Envisioned smarter kind of hyperlink: carrying meaning by, for example, annotating if particular documents agreed or disagreed with each other - Saw productive aspects of social networking: ability to trade messages, participate in discussions and work together to collect and organize documents - Semantic Web: emerging framework for subject-centric computing — mapping out conceptual relationships between facts and ideas
Professor Mario Biagioli discusses the negative implications of judging academic institutions based on metrics, as it promotes a "Publish or Perish'' environment within academic institutions. List three possible ways in which metrics may be manipulated, and explain how each one is used to enhance the impact or metric footprint of a publication. (Hint: Biagioli, Mario. 2020)
- Fake peer reviews - offering the names of real scientists but providing non-institutional email addresses for them (receiving a request to review your own manuscript) - Citation rings - you and other scholars agree to cite each other's articles extensively - Coercive citations - peer reviewers or even editors encourage "the authors of work under review to cite the reviewers' own research in exchange for positive reviews"
What are the six types of post production misconducts that Biagioli warns of? Provide a brief description of each. (Hint: Biagioli, Mario. 2020)
- Fake peer reviews - offering the names of real scientists but providing non-institutional email addresses for them (receiving a request to review your own manuscript) - Citation rings - you and other scholars agree to cite each other's articles extensively - Coercive citations - peer reviewers or even editors encourage "the authors of work under review to cite the reviewers' own research in exchange for positive reviews" - Fake co-authors - making up collaborators who contributed to your article's impact by being falsely associated with prestigious universities - Hacking journal databases - finding articles already reviewed and accepted, and adding your name to the existing authors' byline right before the article goes to press - Purchasing a place on the author byline of articles already written and submitted for publication by writing companies
What are 2 features of Paul Otlet's Mundaneum that are similar in function to modern day computer technology? State each Mundaneum feature and its corresponding modern-day computer feature. (Hint: Lecture 2 Slides)
- His resources were meaningfully hand-linked by staff → similar to hypertext or links - People could submit questions via mail or telegraph → similar to a search engine
What are the four benefits of the Nodes and Links of Hypertext technology? (Hint: Lecture 7 Slides)
- Include multiple media - Be modifiable - Be interactive - Be near-infinite in scope
Which five basic sections are contained in Babbage's analytical engine? (Hint: Time Magazine Staff. 1978)
- Input: translates information from a variety of devices into a code that the computer understands (manual turning of counters or use of punch cards) - Memory: stores information until it is needed by other parts of the machine — most popular memory was the magnetic core (thousands of tiny iron rings, each one encircling an intersection of two wires in a rectangular grid made up of thousands of wires) — now being replaced by semiconductor memories on chips. Computers now also have auxiliary memories in the form of magnetic tapes or discs (large capacity and low cost) - Arithmetic and logic: to handle, direct and process the flood of information (does its number crunching and data manipulation here) - Control: gets instructions stored in the memory section and interprets them, regulates the memory and arithmetic-logic sections and the flow of information between them, and orders processed data to move from the memory to the output section - Output: processed data are translated by this section into electrical impulses that can control an almost endless variety of devices — can take the form of words or numbers or artificial voice etc.
What are 3 main problems with mechanical, analog machines such as the fire control computers that were used on U.S. battleships? (Hint: Lecture 2 slides)
- Limited speed: calculations were enabled by physical movement in the machine - Physical limitations: some calculations difficult to represent physically - Inflexible: unitasker, had to be rebuilt to do a different task
What limitations did Charles Babbage find within print? What was his solution? (Hint: Lecture 2 slides 12-13)
- Required humans to encode and decode information (labor-intensive) - Errors were a common issue - Created The Difference Engine, which broke complex calculations down into simple addition and subtraction
Based on the in-class video excerpts we have watched, explain what microprocessors are used for. (Hint: Cringely, Robert. 1998.)
- Single piece of silicon etched with thousands of transistors → helped significantly reduced the size of the personal computer - Transistors would tell the computer what to do in response to the electric impulses; assembling the information requested and performing the necessary calculations
Though emails first came into use around the 1960s, a key series of modifications and developments had to occur before emails could become as widely popular as they are today. List two of these modifications and explain why each was so relevant to the prevalence of email as the primary form of professional communication. (Hint: Hafner, Katie. 2001)
- Stream of text, with nothing separating one incoming message from another, no reply function - Helpful: delete, answer, cc, bcc — drawing parallels between traditional written communication and email helped people understand what they could do
Which computer network was the first network to use packet-switching? What big U.S. event fueled the motivation for the creation of this network? (Hint: Lecture 4 Slides)
- The ARPANET was the first network to use packet-switching - The Cold War
Describe how the innovation of the 1803 Jacquard Loom influenced computers. (Hint: Greenfield Village. 2018)
- The cards that were used in Jacquard loom helped the machine create intricate and detailed patterns in the cloth efficiently and accurately, and they looked similar to computer punch cards - Punch cards carried instructions that told the early computers what kind of calculations to perform
Explain why Burwell et al. 2018 is a problem. Give an example of a warning sign that proves your point. (Hint: Lecture 3 slides)
- Weird or unnecessary/unrelated citations Citations track how influential your article is Incentive to inflate by author, journal, publisher - Authors seem to be from three different institutions, and present their affiliations so they look like universities - Attempts to bolster credibility
What is a peril/negative aspect of e-mail? (Hint: Hafner, Katie. 2001)
- What you post to mailing list may show up in Internet archives many years later - Pressing the wrong key could catapult a message into cyberspace prematurely or send it to the wrong address - Opening a booby-trapped message can make you both a victim and an unwitting carrier of a computer virus conceived by a malicious code writer
How many out of 4 Minnesota schools had a computer? (Hint: Gihring, Tim. 2016)
3 out of 4
What is a Polytonic Coder supposed to do? (Hint: Beason, Robert G. 1956)
A Polytonic Coder takes punched numbers and has the ability to transmit them just as fast as they can be packed into a line. (Punching in numbers to call someone was much faster than dialing)
What was the main definition of a computer? (Hint: Lecture 2)
A device that computes, especially a programmable electronic machine that performs high-speed mathematical or logical operations or that assembles, stores, correlates, or otherwise processes information
Why did it take the U.S. so much longer to adopt telephones and electricity compared to technologies such as the computer or mobile phone? (Hint: Lecture 7 slides)
A lot more infrastructure was required to be developed in order to adopt the telephone and electricity. But, for technologies such as the computer or mobile phone, the telephone infrastructure, which was already established, was used.
According to "The Web Time Forgot", how have researchers begun to resurrect Paul Otlet's reputation? (Hint: Wright, Alex. 2008)
A small group of researchers republished some of his writing and raised money to establish the museum and archive in Mons (Mundaneum)
What does Goodhart's Law state? How does Goodhart's Law relate to how the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is calculated and manipulated? (Hint: Biagioli, Mario. 2020)
According to Goodhart's Law, as soon as a measure becomes a target, gaming ensues, which undermines its function as a measure Calculated on the citations received by previously published articles (thus functioning as an index of the journal's past impact)
Who is considered to be the inventor of programming? (Hint: Lecture 2 Slides)
Ada Lovelace (worked on Analytical Engine with Babbage)
Which four key areas are chip makers looking toward for long-term growth? Briefly explain each area's high potential and reason for success in a high-technology industry. (Hint: Time Magazine Staff. 1978)
Automobiles: Last year Detroit bought only about $2 million worth of chips, but by the early 1980s the auto industry is expected to become a more than $1 billion market in its own right. At General Motors, chips are already at work regulating the ignition systems of Olds Tornados. GM President Elliott Estes estimates that by 1988 fully 90% of his company's cars will contain even more elaborate electronically controlled ignition systems Communications: Chips will be used to monitor equipment and alert maintenance teams to potential problems before they occur For a basic monthly charge of approximately $100, subscribers will be able to carry their telephones with them wherever they go in the Baltimore-D.C. area and, if they wish, make or receive phone calls while they are walking along the street. Office Equipment: By radically lowering the cost of the traditional minicomputer, miracle chips have dramatically expanded the business market for the minis; their sales are growing at a remarkable 40% annually. At the same time, the chip-equipped minis are proving to be an economical way to get more value for the money out of an existing mainframe. They store information and process it locally, keeping it handy for when it is needed. This allows computer operators back at headquarters to schedule the arrival of incoming data in a steady, manageable way. TVs: The color-television industry was pioneered by a U.S. firm, RCA, American companies were slow to realize the revolutionary impact that transistors and semiconductors were destined to have. As a result, the market was opened to lower-priced foreign models that exploited the new technology. Given that first foothold, Japanese manufacturers have ever since been a growing threat to the U.S. color-TV industry.
Why was H.G. Wells dissatisfied with universities, libraries, and schools of the Twentieth Century? What did he see as a possible solution for this issue? (Hint: Française, August, 1937)
Don't enlarge their scope to meet the demands of the age, remain at the old educational level, poorly endowed The phrase "Permanent World Encyclopaedia" conveys the gist of these ideas. As the core of such an institution would be a world synthesis of bibliography and documentation with the indexed archives of the world. A great number of workers would be engaged perpetually in perfecting this index of human knowledge and keeping it up to date. Concurrently, the resources of micro-photography, as yet only in their infancy, will be creating a concentrated visual record.
Over 50 years ago, the Bolt computer scientist Ray Tomlinson sat down at his computer and wrote a relatively simple computer program that enabled what? (Hint: Lecture 7 slides)
Between-computer email
Explain briefly what a BBS is, explain two of its core functions and one drawback that made it unaccessible for many. (Hint: Lecture 7 slides)
Bulletin Board System: a computer with a single modem that people with modems would try to dial into - Download/swap files - Leave posts or messages - Community (very local due to long distance charges) - Was very slow and complex, so mostly available to computer enthusiasts willing to shell out big bucks for the fastest modems
Explain why there was a slow rise to the utilization of networks by the larger population after they were initially developed?
Due to the network effect: the value of the good or service to a potential customer is dependent on the number of customers already owning that good or using that service. Non-linear increases in benefits
Before email improved its interface, how would people read their emails? (Hint: Lectures 6 and 7)
Electronic mailbox employees called recipients by telephone to tell them to check their mail
According to Jeremy Reimer, how did the ease of cloning IBM's personal computers impact the PC market? (Hint: Reimer, Jeremy. 2012)
Competition between the clones brought the price of the PC down, and add-on cards filled the gaps in functionality from the original model. The market story from 1981 to 1985 is largely about the PC—and we could call it a single market because the clones were absolutely, 100 percent compatible—slowly taking more and more market share
What were some advantages of the Direct Distant Dialing (DDD) system? Before this, why was transcontinental calling so slow? (Hint: Beason, Robert G. 1956)
Convenience and accuracy, but mainly speed Direct Distant Dialing (DDD) - a system that enable a customer to dial long distance numbers directly - Only half a dozen of workers were working to connect users to the other line - Transcontinental calls from Maine to California became six seconds apart (previously was 14 minutes and improved to 90 seconds)
What does John Kay in an article by Chen (2000) say is the difference between his conceptual "Dynabook" and netbooks? How do these ideas relate to the rapid growth of smart phones and televisions compared to other technology? (Hint: Chen, Brian X. 2008; Lecture 7 Slides for Reference to 2nd part)
Limited usage of the computer could be compressed into smaller screens Because people preferred to access apps on smaller screens, this prompted the rapid growth of smartphones and televisions
What did the "father of cybernation" warn against machines and human thinking? (Hint: Time Magazine Staff. 1965)
MIT's Norbert Wiener: our mechanical slaves will cost us our honesty and intelligence
Popular slang acronyms, including LOL, became popular due to which online communication system? (Hint: Lecture 7 Slides)
Usenet (BBS)
How did you pay for access to the Internet in the '90s? (Hint: Manjoo, Farhad. 2009)
Users had to pay by the hour to access to the Internet
Provide a reasoning why individuals would go to unethical extents to have increased numbers of high-impact journals involvements? (Hint: Biagioli, Mario. 2020)
Having a number of articles in top high-impact journals is likely to translate not only into a good tenure-track position, but also into a promotion, salary increase, or, in some universities, a cash bonus The researcher's high-impact publications will contribute to the university's ranking, attracting donors, contracts, and top students
Who designed the MITS Altair 8800? What type of device was it? (Hint: Lecture 6 slides)
Henry Edward Roberts designed the MITS Altair 8800, the first early personal computer
What was the major drawback to Audrey, one of the experimental models created by Murray Hill?
Her recreated speech has been compared to two robot tobacco auctioneers fighting over a cigar butt
Why were humans considered the first ever computers? (Hint: Lecture 2 Slides)
Humans encoded and decoded all the information and organized them in different ways (very labor-intensive)
What mechanism did Tim Berners-Lee suggest could connect all the information on the World Wide Web? (Hint: Gihring, Tim. 2016)
Hyperlinks
What is similar to Bush's memex and interlinked "infinite books"? (Hint: Lecture 7 slides)
Hypertext
According to the article by Farhad Manjoo, what was unique about Geocities.com and what was it a precursor to? (Hint: Manjoo, Farhad. 2009)
In Media Metrix's first listing, Geocities.com, a site that lets you build your own home page, was the 16th most visited site. "And, of course, that was a precursor to blockbusters like MySpace and Facebook—it was the first we saw of user-generated content, which drives the Web today," Coffey says.
Distinguish between traditional research misconduct and postproduction misconduct. Based on each type of misconduct, what are some warning signs we should pay attention to when looking for research articles? (Hint: Biagioli, 2020)
Manipulations of metrics are unethical or worse and yet do not fit the conceptual template of the US federal definition of research misconduct because they do not involve the falsification or fabrication of claims and evidence (nor plagiarism) Though it misrepresents the authorship of the publication, adding fake co-authors does not amount to plagiarism because no appropriation is involved. (You are not lifting ideas or text from anyone but rather sharing your authorial credit with persons who do not in fact exist, which means that you are effectively neither taking nor giving anything.) And while making up fake co-authors affiliated with real prestigious institutions may infringe the trademarks of those universities, such harm falls well outside of the definition of research misconduct. Similarly, adding your name to an article authored by others involves neither falsification or fabrication of evidence or claims (you touch nothing except the authors' byline), nor does it amount to traditional plagiarism because, while you are fraudulently claiming co-authorship (not to mention breaking into a proprietary database), you have not technically stolen text or ideas.
What is packet switching? Also, what processor was known for making this possible? (Hint: Lecture 5 slides)
Messages are broken up into smaller pieces called packets, which would then be sent to the appropriate computers through the network In the event there's a traffic jam from one computer to another, the network can redirect the packets from the sender through a different computer to the receiver - The IMP made this possible
A key step in the development of the personal computer was the replacement of vacuum tubes with a single chip known as the ____? (Hint: Lecture 6 slides)
Microprocessor
Who invented between-computer e-mail in 1971? (Hint: Lecture 6 Slides)
Ray Tomlinson
As the computing industry expanded, what was the focus of the market? (Hint: Lecture 4 slides)
Science and Industry
What is a memex and what are the main limitations around the memex? (Hint: Lecture 4 slides)
The memex was a "device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility" Limitation was that the memex was still human-powered, where initial researchers would hand-link items - "trail" of search could be forwarded to another user - reliance on others as "trailblazers" to help build associations between documents - still a card catalog where one card was created at a time by humans (painstaking human labor)
What are the main differences between a Memex and a smartphone? (Hint: Lecture 4)
The memex was human-powered, where initial researchers would hand-link items - "Trailblazers" had to help build associations between documents - Card catalog (one card at a time) Smartphones have access to all information without the need of humans to hand-link items - Associations between documents are provided instantly - Everything is digital
Why were "miracle chips" considered to be so revolutionary to the computer industry? (Hint: Time Magazine Staff. 1978)
The miracle chip opened the way for the design of custom-made supercomputers and radically lowered the cost of minicomputers (were being used for more and more of the routine functions that were handled by the mainframes)
What is a central processing unit (CPU)? (Hint: Time Magazine Staff. 1978)
The processor is also called the CPU or microprocessor, which executes instructions, performs calculations, and coordinates input/output operations
What was the Carterfone? What was its purpose? And what rule did it help overturn? (Hint: Lecture 5 Slides)
Thomas Carter's device connected telephone and radio conversations without a wired electrical connection; Allowed users to attach a two-way radio transmitter/receiver to their telephone, allowing people to communicated over the radio Overturned FCC Tariff Number 132 - helped establish that the telecom system wasn't ruled by telecom companies; specifically enabled modems to be popular
What is TCP/IP and what are 2 of its main use cases within the development of the internet? (Hint: Lecture 5 slides, video on slide 12)
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol TCP enables data to be transferred between applications and devices on a network and is used in the TCP/IP model. It is designed to break down a message, such as an email, into packets of data to ensure the message reaches its destination successfully and as quickly as possible.
What university was associated with the Gopher navigation scheme, a predecessor to the World Wide Web? (Hint: Gihring, Tim. 2016)
University of Minnesota
What is the "general purpose" of digital electronic computers? (Hint: Lecture 4 slides)
Use binary digits and logical operations and be programmed to do exceptionally complex operations
