UCSB Freshman Seminar “What is computing?”, Fall 2016

Some questions posted by the class after Lecture 3, October 11, 2016

• The example on the board gave a series of numbers that translated to “Hello!”. 72 meant H, 101 meant e, etc. How does the computer know where the code for one number ends and the other begins? How does it know that the code is 72, not 721, when 101 directly procedes it
• How many and what types of encoding are there?
• How many k/bits are necessary to have in an audio in order to have the best quality humans can detect?
• Who created the "ASCLL" code?
• How can a computer encode a picture or a song into a series of number? 
• Since an audio format, like a song, can be downloaded/converted into a computer by the data that was input, how does a computer convert/translate audio that is simply spoken, without physically reading data. For example, when a person asks "Siri" a question on their iPhone, how does the computer convert what it heard into text on the computer screen?
• It is an interesting computational and philosophical question to ponder which, if any, types of information could not be expressed in code. This is equivalent to asking if there exists purely qualitative information that cannot be quantified. 
• How does a computer convert sensory details into numbers?
• What is the most universal coding system that most computers use? In other words, has it changed over the years or evolved to become shorter or more concise?
• What separates uniquely human attributes from those that a computer can understand?
• How are computers able to process lots of large binary numbers so quickly?
• Is every shade of the 17million colors translated as a specific number to create visuals on TVs, computers, phones?
• Different types of information can be stored as long lines of numbers. What are the limitations of such information? Is this format less or more accessible (in the distant future) than books?
• Can a program be modeled by something other than human quantifications?
• How far are we from developing an AI that can feel? Can such a development ever be achieved?
• If Red, Blue, and Yellow are the "primary colors", why did people choose to use Red Green and Blue light when dealing with monitors? Wouldn't using the Primary colors yield the same effect?