WEBVTT 00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:09.462 My name is May-Li Khoe and I'm a designer and an inventor. 00:00:10.300 --> 00:00:15.680 So some of the things I've designed have been at Apple, and now I design products for kids to use 00:00:15.680 --> 00:00:18.060 so that they can have an easier time in school. 00:00:18.060 --> 00:00:22.300 My other jobs include DJ-ing and dancing. 00:00:25.620 --> 00:00:27.960 Computers are everywhere! 00:00:27.960 --> 00:00:33.180 They're in people's pockets, they're in people's cars, people have them on their wrists. 00:00:33.180 --> 00:00:35.460 They might be in your backpack right now. 00:00:36.160 --> 00:00:38.820 But what makes a computer a computer? 00:00:38.820 --> 00:00:41.000 What does make a computer a computer anyway? 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:42.980 And how does it even work? 00:00:46.380 --> 00:00:50.180 Hi I'm Nat! I was one of the original designers of the Xbox. 00:00:50.460 --> 00:00:56.040 I've been working with computers since I was maybe seven years old and now I work on virtual reality. 00:01:07.180 --> 00:01:10.520 As humans, we've always built tools to help us solve problems. 00:01:10.600 --> 00:01:15.900 Tools like a wheelbarrow, a hammer, or a printing press, or a tractor-trailer. 00:01:15.900 --> 00:01:19.220 All of these inventions helped us with manual work. 00:01:19.220 --> 00:01:21.280 Over time, people began to wonder 00:01:21.380 --> 00:01:25.560 if a machine could be designed and built to help us with the thinking work we do, 00:01:25.560 --> 00:01:29.820 like solving equations or tracking the stars in the sky. 00:01:29.820 --> 00:01:34.280 Rather than moving or manipulating physical things like dirt and stone, 00:01:34.280 --> 00:01:38.300 these machines would need to be designed to manipulate information. 00:01:40.040 --> 00:01:43.740 As the pioneers of computer science explored how to design a thinking machine, 00:01:43.740 --> 00:01:46.920 they realized that it had to perform four different tasks. 00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:50.240 It would need to take input, 00:01:51.080 --> 00:01:52.360 store information 00:01:53.400 --> 00:01:56.180 process it and then output the results. 00:01:56.700 --> 00:01:58.580 Now this might sound simple, 00:01:58.580 --> 00:02:01.980 but these four things are common to all computers. 00:02:02.740 --> 00:02:05.620 That's what makes a computer a computer. 00:02:07.940 --> 00:02:10.419 The earliest computers were made out of wood and metal 00:02:10.419 --> 00:02:12.580 with mechanical levers and gears. 00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:17.600 By the 20th century, though, computers started using electrical components. 00:02:17.600 --> 00:02:21.100 These early computers were really large and really slow. 00:02:21.100 --> 00:02:25.380 A computer the size of a room might take hours just to do a basic math problem. 00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:33.040 These machines are things of gleaming, varied colored metal and numerous flashing lights. 00:02:33.320 --> 00:02:36.100 Computers started out as basic calculators, 00:02:36.100 --> 00:02:40.760 which was already really awesome at the time, and they were only manipulating numbers back then. 00:02:40.800 --> 00:02:47.220 But now we can use them to talk to each other, we can use them to play games, control robots, 00:02:47.220 --> 00:02:49.980 and do any crazy thing that you could probably imagine. 00:02:50.920 --> 00:02:54.120 Modern computers look nothing like those clunky old machines 00:02:54.120 --> 00:02:56.580 but they still do these same four things. 00:03:02.740 --> 00:03:04.740 First, we're going to talk about input. 00:03:04.740 --> 00:03:07.180 This is my favorite because what input is 00:03:07.180 --> 00:03:12.240 is the stuff that the world does or that you do that makes the computer do stuff. 00:03:12.240 --> 00:03:14.160 You can tell computers what to do with the keyboard, 00:03:14.160 --> 00:03:18.640 you can tell them what to do with the mouse, the microphone, the camera. 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:22.400 And now if you're wearing a computer on your wrist, it might listen to your heartbeat 00:03:22.400 --> 00:03:25.520 or in your car, it might be listening to what the car is doing. 00:03:25.520 --> 00:03:31.180 And a touchscreen can actually sense your finger, and it takes that as input on what it's doing. 00:03:36.200 --> 00:03:40.680 All these different inputs give a computer information, which is then stored in memory. 00:03:41.860 --> 00:03:45.480 A computer's processor takes information from memory. 00:03:45.480 --> 00:03:47.920 It manipulates it or changes it using an algorithm, 00:03:47.920 --> 00:03:49.980 which is just a series of commands. 00:03:49.980 --> 00:03:54.180 And then it sends the processed information back to be stored in memory again. 00:03:54.200 --> 00:03:58.620 This continues until the processed information is ready to be output. 00:04:03.320 --> 00:04:07.260 How a computer outputs information depends on what the computer is designed to do. 00:04:07.260 --> 00:04:13.180 A computer display can show text, photos, videos, or interactive games -- even virtual reality! 00:04:13.180 --> 00:04:17.279 The output of a computer may even include signals to control a robot. 00:04:17.279 --> 00:04:19.820 And, when computers connect over the Internet, 00:04:19.820 --> 00:04:23.880 the output from one computer becomes the input to another, and vice versa. 00:04:25.620 --> 00:04:29.760 The computers we use today look really different from the earliest thinking machines. 00:04:29.760 --> 00:04:32.620 And who knows what the computers of tomorrow will be like? 00:04:32.620 --> 00:04:37.480 My hope is that you get to help decide what you want the computers of tomorrow to look like. 00:04:37.480 --> 00:04:41.480 But across all computers, regardless of the different types of technology they use, 00:04:41.480 --> 00:04:44.580 they're always doing those same four things. 00:04:44.580 --> 00:04:46.360 They take in information, 00:04:46.360 --> 00:04:47.980 they store it as data, 00:04:47.980 --> 00:04:49.520 they process it, 00:04:49.520 --> 00:04:51.460 and then they output the results.