Das máquinas de calcular à informática

Abstract

Personal computers represent an end product of a long-term evolution chain, which was accelerated during the XX'' century and where the ideas of automation and feedback played a key role. lnitially designed as efficient and fast mathematical calculators, it was due to their capacity to order different information types that compu­ters won their present status in the social context. The distinction between information and knowledge has been systematically put aside in the concepts and applications of the new science of information. A brief sketch of the historical development of these themes is presented, which culminated in the 50's and 60's with the rise of Cybemetics, to be then alsmost forlom.