Before watching

About this video

By Bettina Bair

INSIDE YOUR COMPUTER

Contents

1. Inside your computer p.4

Bettina Bair (4:12)

2. Network theory p.7

Marc Samet (3:31)

3. A brief history of video games p.10

Safwat Saleem (4:46)

4. Inside OKCupid: The math of online dating p.13

Christian Rudder (7:31)

5. Defining cyberwarfare...in hopes of preventing it p.16

Daniel Garrie (3:50)

6. Haptography: Digitizing our sense of touch p.19

Katherine Kuchenbecker (6:29)

7. Reach into the computer and grab the pixel p.22

Jinha Lee (5:08)

8. The radical promise of the multi-touch interface p.25

Jeff Han (8:51)

9. A computer that works like the brain p.28

Kwabena Boahen (16:19)

10. Fighting viruses, defending the net p.32

Mikko Hypponen (17:35)

11. The greatest machine that never was p.36

John Graham-Cumming (12:14)

12. The birth of the computer p.40

George Dyson (17:23)

How does a computer work? The critical components of a computer are the peripherals (including the mouse), the input/output subsystem (which controls what and how much information comes in and out), and the central processing unit (the brains), as well as human-written programs and memory. Bettina Bair walks us through the steps your computer takes with every click of the mouse.

Translate into Russian:

Capture, shrink down, inject into, take apart, detect, measurement, interact with, overwhelm, distraction, fetch, execute, clock widget, initially, compile, send a request, generate an interrupt, multitasker, deal with, intention.

Watch the video “Inside your computer”

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/inside-your-computer-bettina-bair

While watching:

Fill in the gaps:

a) Do you remember when you first realized that your computer was more than just a _____ and _____?

b) Let's _____ that we can shrink down to the _____ of an electron and inject ourselves into a _____ of a mouse.

c) When you click the _____ on your mouse, it sends a ______ to the computer with information about its _______.

d) This subsystem acts like the _____ and _____ and _____ and _____ of the computer.

e) The CPU's job, its whole job, is _______ instructions from memory and ______ them.

f) Each program was initially written by a human in a _______ programming language.

g) Human programs take up a lot of space and contain a lot of unnecessary information to a computer, so they are _____ and made smaller and _____ in bits of ones and zeros in memory.

After watching:

1 Match the words in A with the words in B:

2 Answer the questions:

a) How does the basic input/output subsystem work?

b) How fast can the CPU handle instructions?

c) How are programs encoded and stored in memory?

d) What are the critical components of your computer’s architecture?

e) What does CPU stand for?

f) Why are programs saved in a different format than the human readable programming languages that they are written in?

g) What are some of the things your computer needs to know in order to respond properly to a mouse click?

3 Decide if the statements are true or false:

a) Начало формы

b) Конец формы

c) Начало формы

d) Конец формы

e) Начало формы

f) What is the CPU’s job?

Конец формы

a) If you took your mouse apart, you'd see that it's really a very complicated machine.

b) When your mouse click is received, it's handled by the basic input/output subsystem.

c) Each instruction in the mouse device driver is duly fetched and executed.

d) So, just the simple task of clicking your mouse means visiting some of the critical components of your computer's architecture: peripherals, the basic input-output system, the CPU, programs, and memory.

e) There are programs for everything that the CPU does.

f) Human programs take up little space and contain a lot of important information to a computer.