The shoulders of Giants

Unfortunately, I have not been keeping up with my blog as I should have. This week, instead of posting like I needed to, I was doing homework for my computer science class. I'm taking CS 124, and in it, we learn about computers from the ground up, from wires and batteries to programming in C. I must admit I still don't quite understand it all (though I passed off the assignment, thank goodness) because let's face it - computers are tough. That's why we pay the Geeksquad or bribe our roommates to fix them for us. Nobody wants to spend the time and effort learning about their processor's addressing mode or their windows registry just so they can get back to uploading pictures or emailing friends. We rely on the tech-savvy to keep our digital world up and running. Every time you make a blog post, click a link, or even turn on your computer, you’re taking advantage of engineering feats that the best and the brightest took years, if not decades, to make. However, once an idea is hatched, than it can be shared freely, right (after paying copyright fees, of course). That’s why computers and software are so readily available in our world today. But after reading David’s posts (definitely worth reading if you haven’t yet), that thought of standing on giants shoulders was put in a new light. He mentioned how before there were professional scientists, there were hobbyists, funded by the rich or by themselves.

Another excuse I had this week for not blogging was a presentation for my Chinese class. I researched poverty and the wealth gap in China. Rural poverty in china is astounding, but what I’d like to focus on here is the urban poor, namely, the people who made the computer you’re staring at right now. Computers have leaked their way into almost every facet of society, and the vast majority of American households have more than one. Prices have remained low enough for the middle class to keep up to date with the latest in hardware, and for technology companies to experiment with releasing free software and new business models. While there is a large discussion about open-software and digital freedom, what about the base on which the software is founded? What about open-manufacturing?

Human-rights in Asia is a topic for its own blog post, and I don’t plan to tackle it here. Instead, I am hoping to spur a little more investigation into the cost of our digital world. While abstraction makes it possible for us to work excel spreadsheets without having to program, and access the world’s information without having to learn anything more than how to operate a browser, we need to dig deeper if we hope to understand and change the way the digital world works. Even if an operating system is released for free, there’s a cost involved that goes deeper than the time of those involved. Software, as powerful and intuitive as it is, is tied to hardware, and the digital world, as wonderful as it is, is tied to the real world. So remember, that new iPhone app that is going to change the world costs something, even if it’s free.