Know a Little More

A computer designed to be used with a mouse, keyboard, monitor, and printer could sound like any computer you've used, all made possible by a graphical user interface used on the Xerox Alto. Tom explores its history.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full episode transcript here.

The way you interact with computers was probably shaped by a small team working at Xerox in the 1970s. Tom explains the history of Smalltalk.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full transcript here.

From room-sized machines to barely an inconvenience on your desk, laser printers are in nearly every office. But where did they start? Tom explores the origins of the laser printer.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full transcript here.

Computers talk to each other via networking, most commonly over a wired ethernet connection. Tom explains how that started and why it was such a breakthrough.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full transcript here.

In 1969, the chief scientist at Xerox, Jack Goldman, decided to found a west-coast research center in Palo Alto, right down the road from Engelbart's SRI. Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center or PARC was far enough from headquarters in Rochester, New York, that scientists could feel a little freer to experiment.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full show transcription here.

Tom explains what GPUs are, why they are different than CPUs, and how they kinda just evolved into a product.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full episode transcript here.

Tom discusses the origin of the term "log in", it's early use, and how it became something most of us do every day.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full transcript can be found here.

The predictive capabilities of ChatGPT and other programs based on Large Language Models really seem to infer an artificial intelligence. How do the applications work...and are they sentient? Tom explains why you shouldn't fear ChatGPT.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full transcript here.