It’s hard to think of life without technology these days, but it’s definitely a part of our lives, allowing us to do it faster and easier. But what is behind all the technological advances?
Most technology users are completely unaware of how technological devices work.
Sometimes it’s fun to watch two people heatedly discuss the properties of a device, on one occasion I heard two young people discussing the capabilities of a mobile phone compared to another.
The first couple claimed that their cell phone has more memory and an MP3 player. The second couple claimed that their phone had more features like voice command; however, both ignore the true operation of both devices.
If we take into account the actual operation of an electronic device, we will notice that in reality the differences are only due to the marketing itself, when almost all electronic devices use the same operating base.
Today computer technology is the mother of all technologies, because our real search in new technologies is to find devices that perform certain tasks autonomously.
Perhaps there are those who think differently but it is a matter of analyzing certain electronic devices well.
For example:
The MP3 player
The MP3 requires basic computational elements: memory, processor and program.
Digital camera
The digital camera requires basic computational elements and other advanced elements.
The core of computer technology comes from data processing. Computers have their own language of communication called machine language. In machine language, electrical impulses are interpreted as binary states (0, 1) and each state is represented by more complex binary numbers that become more complicated elements.
Data processing is divided into the following categories:
Digital Signal Processing (DSP)
Binary data interpretation
Pattern interpretation or recognition
Digital Signal Processing (DSP) is one of the most used elements of technology and one of the most important. If we take the example of the cell phone, it would have been very useful for both young people to explain which cell phone uses a processing algorithm. more efficient than the other instead of competing with the one with the most memory.
DSP is a set of algorithms that allow the processing of information from the analog world that has been previously translated into a digital system easily understandable by a computer, it can filter environmental noise, remove imperfections in photographs, interpret our voice commands, among other functions.
The interpretation of binary data corresponds to the processors because these are the ones in charge of interpreting each command of a program. Each processor has its interpretation system called instructions, where each data set represents a binary instruction; this is the main operation of computers.
Pattern Recognition is a data processing element corresponding to a series of complex techniques (including DSP’s). Most of these techniques relate to artificial intelligence technology: Neural networks.
A neural network is an emulation of the brain (biological neural system). Neural networks have the ability to carry out tasks that classical linear data processing may not even like in a neural network that is implemented as a linear processing system but thus emulated.
The neural network allows functions that some devices have such as: voice recognition, face recognition among others.
Many people ignore what is behind everything related to technology, but it is a matter of thinking and giving some credit to those who are behind technological advances because thanks to them our lives are more comfortable.