Science and Nature

Crash Course Computer Science

In this series, we're going to trace the origins of our modern computers, take a closer look at the ideas that gave us our current hardware and software, discuss how and why our smart devices just keep getting smarter, and even look towards the future!

The Future of Computing: Crash Course Computer Science #40

12m 21s

In the past 70 years electronic computing has fundamentally changed how we live our lives, and we believe it’s just getting started. From ubiquitous computing, artificial intelligence, and self-driving cars to brain computer interfaces, wearable computers, and maybe even the singularity there is so much amazing potential on the horizon.

Episodes

  • Representing Numbers + Letters with Binary: Crash Course Computer Science #4: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Representing Numbers + Letters with Binary: Crash Course Computer Science #4

    S1 E4 - 10m 38s

    Today, we’re going to take a look at how computers use a stream of 1s and 0s to represent all of our data - from our text messages and photos to music and webpages. We’re going to focus on how these binary values are used to represent numbers and letters, and discuss how our need to perform operations on larger and more complex values brought us from our 8-bit video games.

  • Boolean Logic & Logic Gates: Crash Course Computer Science #3: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Boolean Logic & Logic Gates: Crash Course Computer Science #3

    S1 E3 - 10m 1s

    Today, Carrie Anne is going to take a look at how those transistors we talked about last episode can be used to perform complex actions. With the just two states, on and off, the flow of electricity can be used to perform a number of logical operations, which are guided by a branch of mathematics called Boolean Algebra. We’re going to focus on three fundamental operations - NOT, AND, and OR - and

  • Electronic Computing: Crash Course Computer Science #2: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Electronic Computing: Crash Course Computer Science #2

    S1 E2 - 10m 43s

    So we ended last episode at the start of the 20th century with special purpose computing devices such as Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machines. But as the scale of human civilization continued to grow as did the demand for more sophisticated and powerful devices. Soon these cabinet-sized electro-mechanical computers would grow into room-sized behemoths that were prone to errors. But is was these

  • Early Computing: Crash Course Computer Science #1: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Early Computing: Crash Course Computer Science #1

    S1 E1 - 11m 36s

    Hello, world! Welcome to Crash Course Computer Science! So today, we’re going to take a look at computing’s origins, because even though our digital computers are relatively new, the need for computation is not.

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