Менеджеры и менеджмент (Executives and Management) - 20 стр.

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194
suaded big business (which had previously turned its nose up at personal computers) to adopt the machines
wholesale. And a new industry was suddenly thriving.
The next big step was the move to computer communications in the '90s, when a program called Mosaic,
written by students at the University of Illinois who later helped found the Netscape company, shot what was
already an accelerating global Internet into serious overdrive. The prospect of millions of computers connected
worldwide was suddenly a reality. People are still processing the effects of that explosion. And a lot of people,
still in denial, are kidding themselves by thinking that the end of the Net transformations is anywhere in sight.
Where are the frontiers of computing? It's scary to contemplate, because the field is so young and the tech-
nology so flexible. But consider what some computer scientists are already working on. Nanocomputers–
microscopic devices that may change the way we think of materials. Digital ink that will, in effect, transform
paper into something as protean as computer screens. And "artificial life" software that works like biological
organisms, so much so that it strives to be classified as itself alive.
Skeptics dismiss the feasibility of many of these ambitious projects. In other words, people still persist in
underestimating the power of a machine whose limitations are seemingly unbounded. If history is our guide,
even our imaginations cannot grasp what the computer will ultimately become.
T a s k 6. Discuss the following points from the previous text.
1. The history of the computer up to the '60s of the 20
th
century.
2. The appearance of a personal computer.
3. The move to computer communications.
T a s k 7. Give a summary of the following texts from "Newsweek Special Issue", Winter 1997-98.
THE MOUSE
Humble in size (fits in your palm) and even humbler in name, the computer mouse is now taken for
granted. Actually it's part and parcel of the elephant-size leap forward in computing that it accompanied: the
graphical user interface, or GUI. In the mid-'60s, when GUI's godfather, Douglas Engelbart, began playing with
what would become windows and menus, he realized that for people to comfortably access the stuff within a
computer, they'd need a tool that let them intervene directly on their screens, without necessarily using a key-
board. After experimenting light pens and steering wheels, he decided on a pointing device as easy to use as an
index finger. The first prototypes were wheeled blocks carved from wood. Later variations at Xerox's Palo Alto
Research Center and at Apple streamlined and reshaped the device. Now only the tail-like wire is really
mousey.
BAR CODES
Supermarket clerks use bar-code scanners to whisk your purchases from cart to bag in no time, but
the technology behind them developed more slowly. In 1948, a grad student named Bernard Silver over-
heard a foodchain exec bemoan the lack of an automated-checkout system. Silver, with fellow student
Norman Woodland, developed and patented a system that used light to read a set of concentric circles.
Crude and cumbersome, Woodland and Silver's concept waited for decades for the two innovations that
would make it practical: computers and lasers. By the late '60s, they'd arrived. In 1973, IBM's Universal
Product Code was adopted by the grocery industry. The following summer, a single pack of gum became
the first item sold with a scanner. Store managers quickly discovered they could use the system not just
to speed checkouts, but also to control inventory and gauge customers' habits. Shopping has never been
the same.
THE CELLULAR PHONE
With its catchy name and clear convenience, the walkie-talkie was one of the hits of World War II. So after
the war, companies moved to capitalize on the public interest in wireless phones. In 1946 AT&T set up the first
commercial public radiotelephone service, in St. Louis. The system used a single transmitter and offered just
six channels. It was a success, but was soon backlogged. And the system couldn't be expanded without clogging

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