Device designed to compute. A sort of automated abacus. The computer can also follow a program, which is a sequence of automatic instructions, like the piano roll of a player piano.
In addition (no pun intended!), we have developed a system equating numbers to letters according to a code. Also, we have developed methods to enable computers to be connected to each other so that signals can pass from one to another. These two things have resulted in the use of the computer today essentially as a tool for communication.
Series or list of switching signals that determine a computer's behavior, just as the holes in a piano roll would cause the piano keys to be played in a certain sequence.
A program that enables the computer to perform its most basic tasks. For instance, the OS coordinates the computer's parts so that the hard drive's motor turns on and off at the right time. It is the OS's job to translate the signal from a keyboard into a letter and then to present the letter on the screen if that is appropriate.
A program that depends on the OS running. It applies the OS (and therefore the computer) to a specific desired task, such as word processing, playing music, or displaying Web pages.
Sequence of binary signals constituting a discrete unit and thus representing a document, a part of a program, or some other functional object, and recorded on a storage device such as a diskette or hard drive. The term file derives from the Latin word for "thread" and has practically nothing to do with a paper file in a manila folder. The confusing use of the latter as a metaphor for the former has (alas) become entrenched.
Files in storage can be grouped into directories, also known (by an awkward continuation of a bad metaphor) as "folders."
A vast network of computers connected primarily by telephone lines. Signals pass from computer to computer until they reach their intended destinations. Signals pass efficiently, because they always have multiple possible routes to get to their destinations.
Abstract entity consisting of a special use of the Internet to pass documents with automatic references to other documents. The World Wide Web (or WWW or Web) is like a library, where, instead of your reading a footnote and then going to the catalog, looking that book or article up, and finding it, you have the computer do that work for you. The World Wide Web is nothing like television.
The type of document created for use on the World Wide Web, containing references to other documents in such a form that the computer can retrieve the referenced document at the user's command. (This term was not invented by English or Classics majors.)
Sequence of symbols that can be read by both human beings and machines and that computers use as a program of instructions. In the context of the World Wide Web, the source code of a document consists of normal text in a human language, marked up with symbols taken from Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML.
Application designed to render the source code of World Wide Web documents (also known as Web pages) into an appropriate form for human use. Graphical browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, the AOL Browser, Opera, Mozilla, Nautilus, and Konqueror, render the text in a format resembling a printed page, with embedded images placed appropriately within the layout. There are also text, audio, and braille browsers.