Speaker 1: You know, usually when we talk about magic, there's this
Speaker 1: expectation of smoke and mirrors, like a sleight of hand.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, you pull a rabbit out of a hat,
Speaker 2: and the audience just applauds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they don't really want to know how the
Speaker 1: trick works.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The mystery is the whole point.
Speaker 2: The joy is totally in the deception. I mean, the
Speaker 2: moment you see the trap door, the magic is just gone.
Speaker 1: But then you look at a modern smartphone. You just
Speaker 1: tap a flat piece of glass and instantly you're looking
Speaker 1: at your family halfway across the globe on a real
Speaker 1: time high definition video call, oh for.
Speaker 2: Sure, or buying groceries with just a fingerprint, right.
Speaker 1: Or checking a baby monitor from your office. It feels
Speaker 1: like pure magic. But if you actually pull back the
Speaker 1: curtain on this illusion, which you find isn't a trapdoor
Speaker 1: or like smoking mirrors, No, not at all. We're looking
Speaker 1: at an environment that is just a massive, invisible scaffolding
Speaker 1: of pure math.
Speaker 2: It's the absolute definition of hiding complexity behind a simple interface.
Speaker 2: We interact with computers every single day, but the underlying
Speaker 2: mechanics of how they actually function remain just a complete
Speaker 2: mystery to most of us.
Speaker 1: Which brings us to our mission today. It's Friday, March
Speaker 1: twenty seventh, twenty twenty six, and welcome to the learner.
Speaker 1: Whether you're prepping for a career change or just insanely
Speaker 1: curious about the digital scaffolding holding up your life, we
Speaker 1: are going to decode.
Speaker 2: That mystery, and we have some great source material for this.
Speaker 1: Yes, we're using the foundational principles from the comtia It
Speaker 1: Fundamentals plus Guide to do it. And I promise this
Speaker 1: isn't going to be some dry textbook lecture. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: unpack this.
Speaker 2: Let's start by dismantling that illusion of the modern computing device.
Speaker 2: Take that FaceTime call you mentioned, Yeah, just feel so
Speaker 2: natural to you the user. It is a seamless experience
Speaker 2: of site and sound. But underneath that glass screen, some
Speaker 2: incredibly smart people figured out how to represent anything you
Speaker 2: can see, hear, or touch as massive, endless sequences of.
Speaker 3: Ones and zeros, just ones in zero.
Speaker 2: Oh. We call this data.
Speaker 1: So wait, every single pixel of that video call, every
Speaker 1: subtle frequency of your voice is being mathematically chopped.
Speaker 2: Up, exactly mathematically chopped up.
Speaker 1: And translated into these ones and zeros transmitted across the
Speaker 1: globe and then reassembled on the other end almost.
Speaker 2: Instantly, precisely, And because the sounds and images a computer
Speaker 2: creates are fundamentally just numbers, the computer can change them,
Speaker 2: oh right, or create them entirely from scratch, simply by
Speaker 2: doing a massive amount of calculations.
Speaker 1: It's wild to think about. I mean, it's not just
Speaker 1: video calls. It's how programmers use math to turn like
Speaker 1: a raw recording of a bunch of kids in front
Speaker 1: of a green screen into a massive Harry Potter spellcasting.
Speaker 2: Scene, oh perfect example, Or how.
Speaker 1: They render CGI dinosaurs breathing in Jurassic Park, or a
Speaker 1: web swinging spider man over Manhattan. Spider Man isn't a drawing,
Speaker 1: He's just a really complex math equation being solved millions
Speaker 1: of times a second.
Speaker 2: It really is incredible when you break it down like that,
Speaker 2: And it all comes down to three foundational building blocks
Speaker 2: from our techs. First, you have the hardware, the actual
Speaker 2: physical stuff, right, This is the physical presence of the machine.
Speaker 2: The tangible components you can actually touch or throw out
Speaker 2: a window if you get frustrated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hopefully not, but yeah, the silicon, the glass, the
Speaker 1: plastic exactly.
Speaker 2: Establishing that BTS line is crucial. So hardware is the
Speaker 2: physical realm. Then sitting inside that hardware, you have the processors.
Speaker 1: The brains of the operation.
Speaker 2: These are the super fast electronic calculators carrying out the computations.
Speaker 2: And finally you have the programming or the software, which.
Speaker 1: Is the operating system and the apps.
Speaker 3: Right, you got it.
Speaker 2: The software is what actually tells the processor what math
Speaker 2: to do. Because a processor is essentially a blind engine.
Speaker 2: It has immense power, but absolutely no direction until the
Speaker 2: software provides a map.
Speaker 1: I picture the processor as an incredibly fast but painfully
Speaker 1: literal accountant.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to look at it.
Speaker 1: Like this accountant can do billions of calculations a second,
Speaker 1: but they only know two numbers one and zero, which
Speaker 1: tiny electrical switches turning on.
Speaker 2: And off exactly right.
Speaker 1: So if you don't give this account exact step by
Speaker 1: step instructions via software, they just sit there doing nothing.
Speaker 2: Just waiting for a command.
Speaker 1: But that raises a question for me. If it's all
Speaker 1: just basic math at light speed, at what point does
Speaker 1: a fancy desktop calculator officially become a quote unquote computer.
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that the line isn't actually drawn
Speaker 2: by the math itself, but by storage and programming.
Speaker 1: Oh really, not the math.
Speaker 2: Nope, those two elements bridge the gap. Think about a
Speaker 2: simple calculator. It just processes the numbers you punch in
Speaker 2: right then and there. It has no memory of what
Speaker 2: it did yesterday.
Speaker 1: Right, you hit clear, and it's gone forever exactly.
Speaker 2: A computer, however, can store complex multi step programs and
Speaker 2: save vast amounts of data for later use. It has permanence, and.
Speaker 1: The physical reality of that storage is almost unrecognizable from
Speaker 1: where it started, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Oh it's night and day. Early data storage didn't even
Speaker 2: use microchips. It relied on paper car or long spools
Speaker 2: of tape with literal physical holes punched into them to
Speaker 2: represent those ones and zero paper cards.
Speaker 1: That is just so crazy to picture now.
Speaker 2: A literal hole was a one and intac paper was
Speaker 2: a zero. If you'd take a single standard modern smartphone
Speaker 2: photo today, the amount of ones and zeros required to
Speaker 2: store that image would have easily filled the first commercial
Speaker 2: data storage systems of the early nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: Wow, just one photo, just one selfie?
Speaker 2: And back then in today's money renting the equipment to
Speaker 2: store that single selfie would have cost thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: a month.
Speaker 1: Thousands of dollars a month just to store one photo.
Speaker 1: And now we carry around whole libraries of high definition
Speaker 1: video in our pockets, which forces us to look at
Speaker 1: the physical boxes actually doing this.
Speaker 2: Math right, the form factor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the storage and processing of shrunk, that drastically,
Speaker 1: the physical footprint of the computer has entirely transformed alongside it.
Speaker 2: The physical evolution of computers is really a story of
Speaker 2: shifting from shared massive resources to high personal, dedicated ones,
Speaker 2: and now to something completely.
Speaker 1: Ambient, ambient computing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen sixties, computing power was so expensive and
Speaker 2: bulky that you had to centralize it. These were multi
Speaker 2: user computers.
Speaker 1: We're talking about mainframes, mini computers, and supercomputers, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: room size machines used by the military, big banks or universities.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, massive machines. They were designed to handle multitasking
Speaker 2: for dozens or even thousands of users.
Speaker 1: At once, by calculating massive data sets for the national census,
Speaker 1: or trying to map the human genome, or you know,
Speaker 1: figuring out the answer to life, the universe and everything exactly.
Speaker 2: But as the physics of microchips improved and transistors shrink,
Speaker 2: we just didn't need a whole room to do the
Speaker 2: math anymore. By the nineteen seventies and eighties, we shifted
Speaker 2: to dedicated computers.
Speaker 1: The personal computer or PC.
Speaker 2: Right, suddenly you had a desktop, then a laptop, and
Speaker 2: eventually an ultrabook. The processing power was dedicated to a
Speaker 2: single user sitting right in front of it.
Speaker 1: And then, of course the explode mobile devices smartphones, tablets, fablets.
Speaker 2: And we also got specialty mobile devices things like e readers.
Speaker 1: Oh like the Kindle. I love my Kindle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they use e ink screens that physically rearrange microcapsules
Speaker 2: of black and white pigments so the screen doesn't wash
Speaker 2: out and direct sunlight.
Speaker 1: That is such a cool piece of specialized.
Speaker 2: Hardware, or rugged GPS units specifically designed for offshore sailing
Speaker 2: or extended backcountry backpacking. But the most recent evolution is
Speaker 2: perhaps the most profound shift in computing history.
Speaker 1: The Internet of Things right, yeah, IoT.
Speaker 2: Yes, This is where the processors are embedded into objects
Speaker 2: that aren't traditionally considered computers at all.
Speaker 1: The dispersal of computing power into our environment like medical
Speaker 1: devices monitoring a patient's vitals, smart cars, doorbell cameras.
Speaker 2: Even refrigerators that track their own inventory and tell you
Speaker 2: when you're out of milk.
Speaker 1: It totally changes our relationship with the hardware. You weren't
Speaker 1: sitting down at a desk to use the computer. You
Speaker 1: are living inside a matrix of constant computation.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Wait, I have to push back on this a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 3: Sure, go for it.
Speaker 1: If my phone is basically a supercomputer compared to a
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty's mainframe, and even my kitchen appliances are doing
Speaker 1: complex math, why do we still have massive warehouse size
Speaker 1: server farms today.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: Like, if the devices are so powerful, aren't we just
Speaker 1: returning to the old dumb terminal days where a giant
Speaker 1: machine somewhere else does all the heavy lifting and our
Speaker 1: thousand dollars phones are just shiny glass screens to view
Speaker 1: the results.
Speaker 2: That is the exact tension driving modern architecture. The concept
Speaker 2: of remotely accessed computer systems is central to how everything
Speaker 2: works today.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm not totally off base, not at all.
Speaker 2: While your phone has immense local processing power. The sheer
Speaker 2: volume of data we interact with far exceeds what a
Speaker 2: small battery power device can handle alone.
Speaker 1: Like streaming full high definition movies or running complex web applications.
Speaker 2: Right or sinking massive photolibrary. So the cloud is essentially
Speaker 2: just someone else's mainframe.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: In many ways, Yes, we use our powerful dedicated devices
Speaker 2: to access centralized data storage and processing. It gives us
Speaker 2: the best of both worlds.
Speaker 3: Makes sense.
Speaker 2: We use local processing for immediate tasks like rendering the
Speaker 2: smooth swiping animations on your screen or filtering audio, and
Speaker 2: we use remote processing on the server farm for the
Speaker 2: heavy lifting and cross device synchronization.
Speaker 1: So we have this incredible hardware sitting on our desks,
Speaker 1: in our pockets, and in remote server farms.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But going back my analogy, an incredibly fast accountant who
Speaker 1: only speaks in ones and zeros is utterly useless to
Speaker 1: me if I can't speak their language. We need a
Speaker 1: way to bridge that communication gap between human intent and
Speaker 1: processor math.
Speaker 2: And that bridge is the operating system or the OS.
Speaker 2: It is the fundamental software foundation of the device.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: It defines what commands the system can perform and exactly
Speaker 2: how you are allowed to interact with it, whether you're
Speaker 2: clicking a matt how, swiping a screen, or speaking a command.
Speaker 1: I think of the operating system like the manager of
Speaker 1: a very busy, highly technical restaurant.
Speaker 2: I like that analogy.
Speaker 1: If I'm the customer, I don't walk directly into the
Speaker 1: kitchen and start yelling at the chef, who is the
Speaker 1: process in this case to cook my meal.
Speaker 3: No, that would be a disaster, right.
Speaker 1: The chef only speaks a highly specialized language of exact
Speaker 1: heat temperatures and precise millisecond timing. If I try to
Speaker 1: talk to the chef, I'll just cause a.
Speaker 3: Kitchen fire, a digital kitchen fire, exactly.
Speaker 1: Instead, I talk to the manager the OS. I place
Speaker 1: my simple human order, and the manager translates my request
Speaker 1: into the specific optimized instructions the chef needs to execute it.
Speaker 2: And just like restaurants, there are completely different managers with
Speaker 2: very different management philosophies for sure. For desktop and laptop pieces,
Speaker 2: the market is heavily dominated by the IBM compatible or
Speaker 2: Intel platform, which primarily runs Microsoft Windows or sometimes Linux.
Speaker 1: And then there's the Apple Mac platform running.
Speaker 2: Mec os correct though interestingly Max transition to using Intel
Speaker 2: CPUs for a while, which meant a Mac could actually
Speaker 2: run Windows natively using a utility called Bootcamp. It totally
Speaker 2: blurred the lines of hardware.
Speaker 1: Platform that hardware compatibility is a crucial factor, and the
Speaker 1: COMTI guide highlights a major divide in how these operating
Speaker 1: systems are built and distributed. Right.
Speaker 2: Yes, you have commercial operating systems like Windows and Maco,
Speaker 2: where a single company owns rights and tightly controls the
Speaker 2: underlying code.
Speaker 1: And then you have open source operating systems like Linux.
Speaker 2: Exactly with Linux distributions like Ubuntu, the source code is
Speaker 2: entirely free and open. Anyone in the world can inspect it,
Speaker 2: modify it, and distribute it.
Speaker 1: And we also have to talk about Chromos right because
Speaker 1: it's a variant of Linux built by Google specifically for
Speaker 1: what are called thin clients.
Speaker 2: Yes, thin clients are fascinating. They are computers that don't
Speaker 2: install massive, heavy software locally. Instead, they act as lightweight portals,
Speaker 2: relying heavily on web apps like Office Online.
Speaker 1: The heavy lifting happens on the server. Going right back
Speaker 1: to that clouds a maintrain concept.
Speaker 2: We talked about, You've got it, and the mobile landscape
Speaker 2: is just as varied. You have Apple iOS, which is
Speaker 2: entirely proprietary and locked strictly to Apple hardware.
Speaker 1: Android is the big alternative.
Speaker 2: There, right. Android is another variant of Linux and its
Speaker 2: open source, allowing dozens of different manufacturers to use and
Speaker 2: modify it. Then you have Windows Phone, which tried to
Speaker 2: unify the desktop and mobile experience with its tile interface.
Speaker 1: And I remember BlackBerry.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the historical context of BlackBerry is important. They
Speaker 2: dominated early mobile business by relying on their own proprietary
Speaker 2: OS that was deeply integrated with those physical keyboards.
Speaker 1: I kind of missed those keyboards. Yeah, But we also
Speaker 1: have to look at the actual menus these restaurant managers
Speaker 1: hand us.
Speaker 2: The interface.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the graphical User interface or GUI, that's what most
Speaker 1: of us use. We click colorful icons with a mouse
Speaker 1: or tap buttons on a screen. The GUI puts guardrails
Speaker 1: up so we don't accidentally wander into the kitchen and
Speaker 1: break things, right.
Speaker 2: But then there's the command line interface or CLI, where
Speaker 2: you literally just type lines of text into.
Speaker 3: A blank terminal, sounds activity.
Speaker 2: It can be. The GUI hides the complexity, which is
Speaker 2: great for everyday use. Yeah, but the CLI gives you direct,
Speaker 2: unfiltered access to the operating system's raw power, so professional
Speaker 2: would use that exactly. A network administrator using a CLI
Speaker 2: can type a single line of text and instantly reconfigure
Speaker 2: one hundred different machines, whereas doing that through a GUI
Speaker 2: would require clicking through menus for hours.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's where it gets really interesting. We have all
Speaker 1: these different restaurant managers Windows, mac Os, Linux, iOS, Android.
Speaker 1: Why are there so many? Why hasn't one single operating
Speaker 1: system just won the war and taken over absolutely everything.
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it really
Speaker 2: comes down to the unavoidable trade offs between hardware optimization
Speaker 2: and universal flexibility.
Speaker 1: Tell me more, an.
Speaker 2: Operating system has to be tuned for the physical hardware
Speaker 2: it runs on. Apple tightly controls both the hardware manufacturing
Speaker 2: and the software development. That means iOS is incredibly optimized
Speaker 2: for the exact specific components inside an iPhone. It's a
Speaker 2: walled garden, but because they control the soil and the seeds,
Speaker 2: the garden is very well manicured and highly stable.
Speaker 1: So Apple is the restaurant that grows its own vegetables,
Speaker 1: raises its own beef, and writes its own recipes exactly.
Speaker 2: Google on the other hand, designed Android to be an
Speaker 2: open bizarre They license Android to be flexible because it
Speaker 2: needs to run on thousands of wildly different hardware configurations.
Speaker 1: From a high end Samsung folding phone to like a
Speaker 1: fifty dollars budget tablet you get at the grocery store.
Speaker 2: Exactly different users and manufacturers have completely different needs. Some
Speaker 2: prioritize absolute control and stability, while others prioritize flexibility, cost
Speaker 2: or customization. One single OS simply cannot serve all those
Speaker 2: conflicting masters.
Speaker 1: That makes total sense. Yeah, okay, so we have our devices,
Speaker 1: we have our OS translating our human requests into math.
Speaker 1: But a single computer sitting alone in a room is
Speaker 1: incredibly limited.
Speaker 3: Very limited.
Speaker 1: The real inflection point in human history was when we
Speaker 1: figured out how to connect them.
Speaker 2: Networking is where the fundamental nasure of computing changes at
Speaker 2: the foundational level. You have a land a local area network. Okay,
Speaker 2: This connects computers in a single, defined physical location, like
Speaker 2: your house or an office building. They usually connect through
Speaker 2: a central piece of hardware called a switch, which directs
Speaker 2: traffic locally between those specific devices.
Speaker 1: I picture like a private family group chat.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good comparison.
Speaker 1: Everyone in the house can talk to each other, share files,
Speaker 1: and send messages quickly and securely because they are all
Speaker 1: in the same closed loop. But if I need to
Speaker 1: send a message to someone outside the house, I need
Speaker 1: a bigger system.
Speaker 2: That's where you need a one A wide area network
Speaker 2: a when connects multiple independent lands together over large geographical.
Speaker 1: Distances like the whole world.
Speaker 2: YEP, the Internet itself is simply the ultimate global WHAN.
Speaker 2: It is a massive network of networks connected by devices
Speaker 2: called routers, communicating over vast infrastructures like DSL, cable or
Speaker 2: fiber optic lines.
Speaker 1: So if the LAN is the family group chat, the
Speaker 1: WAN is the global postal service precisely, and the router
Speaker 1: sitting in my living room, often called the SO router
Speaker 1: for small office home office, is my personal post office
Speaker 1: sorting facility.
Speaker 2: It looks at every single piece of data.
Speaker 1: Right If I'm just setting a file to my wireless printer,
Speaker 1: the router keeps that data securely inside the house, But
Speaker 1: if I type in a website, the router knows to
Speaker 1: send that request out into the global WAN.
Speaker 2: And most of these ESO routers also act as wireless
Speaker 2: access points or WAPs, projecting a Wi Fi signal, so
Speaker 2: we don't have to physically plug our laptops into the
Speaker 2: wall with an Ethernet cable.
Speaker 1: Thank goodness for Wi Fi.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and the primary reasons we build these vast networks
Speaker 2: are resource sharing and data assets.
Speaker 1: Resource sharing seems pretty straightforward.
Speaker 2: It's simple economics. Why would a company buy ten separate
Speaker 2: printers for an office when they can put one high
Speaker 2: capacity printer on the land and have everyone share it seamlessly.
Speaker 1: That makes total sense. For hardware, the data assets, that
Speaker 1: is where the real value lies, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Unquestionably for modern organizations, data is universally their most valuable
Speaker 2: asset after their human personnel. We're talking about vast databases
Speaker 2: of customer records, years of proprietary research, detailed financial histories.
Speaker 1: And it also encompasses intellectual property or IP, digital products, copyrights, trademarks.
Speaker 2: The entire value of a modern corporation often exists purely
Speaker 2: as ones and zeros sitting on a server somewhere.
Speaker 1: And there are massive legal frameworks built entirely around protecting
Speaker 1: that data, like the Source Mentions, Canada's PIPEDA.
Speaker 2: Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a mouthful. Yeah, but it strictly regulates how
Speaker 1: companies are legally allowed to collect, use, and store human data.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly important legislation.
Speaker 1: Which leads me to a major concern. If data is
Speaker 1: genuinely the most valuable asset on Earth, and we are
Speaker 1: rapidly moving toward an Internet of things where my baby monitor,
Speaker 1: my smart car, and my kitchen appliances are all constantly
Speaker 1: transmitting data over the network.
Speaker 2: I see where you're going with this.
Speaker 1: Are we just leaving the vault door wide open?
Speaker 2: This raises an important question, and you've hit on the
Speaker 2: single biggest crisis in it today. There's a constant, unavoidable
Speaker 2: tension in network architecture between accessibility and confidentiality.
Speaker 1: Meaning we demand that our data be available to us
Speaker 1: from any device anywhere in the world instantly. Yes, but
Speaker 1: at the same time we demand it be completely hidden
Speaker 1: and protected from hackers. That seems impossible.
Speaker 2: It's extremely difficult, and IoT devices are notoriously difficult to
Speaker 2: secure because a smart light bulb or a thermostat needs
Speaker 2: to be cheap and use very little electricity. It just
Speaker 2: doesn't have the processing power to run heavy sophisticated security software.
Speaker 1: Oh I hadn't thought of that the hardware limits.
Speaker 3: The security exactly.
Speaker 2: Furthermore, everyday users rarely changed the default passwords on these devices.
Speaker 2: There's a famous case where a high end casino was hacked.
Speaker 1: A casino they have massive security, they do.
Speaker 2: The hackers didn't attack the casino's heavily fortified main servers directly. Instead,
Speaker 2: they found an internet connected smart thermometer inside an aquarium
Speaker 2: in the lobby.
Speaker 1: Wait, really, they hacked a fish tank.
Speaker 2: They hacked the fish tank because the thermometer was on
Speaker 2: the same internal network as the rest of the building
Speaker 2: and it had terrible security. The hackers compromise.
Speaker 1: The thermometer, that is insane.
Speaker 2: They used it to laterally pivot into the main network
Speaker 2: and extract the high roller database.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: So as we network billions of ambient devices, the traditional
Speaker 2: security perimeter completely dissolves.
Speaker 1: That is legitimately terrifying, and it perfectly illustrates why this
Speaker 1: knowledge isn't just trivia. We've successfully decoded the mechanisms of hardware,
Speaker 1: the translation of software, and the global routing of nets works.
Speaker 2: We covered a lot of ground, but how.
Speaker 1: Does understanding this scaffolding actually translate to the real world? Specifically,
Speaker 1: why should you the listener care about pursuing something like
Speaker 1: the Comtia IT Fundamentals plus certification.
Speaker 2: On a purely practical level, the tech field is experiencing
Speaker 2: explosive growth. We're seeing certain technology sectors projecting twenty percent
Speaker 2: growth curves. IT professionals who hold certifications on their resumes
Speaker 2: fundamentally command better jobs and earn significantly higher salaries. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: ninety one percent of hiring managers explicitly state that COMTIA
Speaker 2: certifications are highly valuable in validating it expertise.
Speaker 1: Because it proves you actually know how the magic.
Speaker 3: Trick works exactly.
Speaker 2: It provides objective proof that you understand the underlying physics
Speaker 2: of the digital world.
Speaker 1: The huge benefit of COMTI specifically is that it is
Speaker 1: fundamentally vendor neutral.
Speaker 2: That's key.
Speaker 1: It isn't a tutorial on how to use a specific
Speaker 1: Microsoft product or an Apple application. It teaches the universal
Speaker 1: underlying concepts of computation and networking.
Speaker 2: So whether you are put in front of a Mac,
Speaker 2: a Windows PC, a Linux server, or an Android tablet,
Speaker 2: the foundational skills apply perfectly.
Speaker 1: It establishes a baseline core of knowledge, often acting as
Speaker 1: a stepping stone before someone takes the COMTIAA plus certification
Speaker 1: to become a dedicated working technician.
Speaker 2: That's usually that career path.
Speaker 1: Yes, so what does this all mean? Let's say you
Speaker 1: weren't looking for a career change at all. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: a florist, or an architect or a teacher. You just
Speaker 1: want to understand the world, right. Why should a non
Speaker 1: technical professional care about vendor neutral IT fundamentals.
Speaker 2: Because digital literacy is no longer an optional skill in
Speaker 2: modern society. It is the core competency of daily life.
Speaker 2: You might be running a small retail business entirely from
Speaker 2: a smartphone and a square reader.
Speaker 1: Or you might be trying to navigate international privacy laws
Speaker 1: like Pipeda to protect your startups customer list exactly.
Speaker 2: Or you might just want to understand how to segment
Speaker 2: your home Wi Fi network so a hacker can't use
Speaker 2: your smart doorbell to pivot into your personal laptop.
Speaker 1: The Phish tank lesson Phish.
Speaker 2: Tank lesson Understanding the universal mechanisms of IT fundamentals empowers you.
Speaker 2: It ensures that you are intentionally controlling the technology, rather
Speaker 2: than letting the technology blindly control you.
Speaker 1: That is the real magic. Taking an invisible, overwhelming system
Speaker 1: and turning it into a tangible tool you can actually wield. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming along on this deep
Speaker 1: dive into the foundational architecture of the digital world.
Speaker 2: It was a pleasure unpacking this with you.
Speaker 1: We have traveled all the way from the microscopic electrical
Speaker 1: switches of processor math, up through the physical evolution of
Speaker 1: room sized mainframes to the ambient computing of the innernative things.
Speaker 2: We've decoded how operating systems bridge the gap between human
Speaker 2: thought and binary logic.
Speaker 1: And traverse the massive wide area networks that connect our planet.
Speaker 2: It is an incredible amount of complexity, but when you
Speaker 2: break it down, it is just logic, math and connective.
Speaker 1: I want to leave you with one final provocative thought
Speaker 1: inspired by our journey. Today, we learned that computing power
Speaker 1: has relentlessly shrunk drastically. It went from mainframes that literally
Speaker 1: filled entire buildings, to personal computers on our desks, to
Speaker 1: the smartphone resting in your pocket right now, and today
Speaker 1: through the Internet of Things, that computing power is shrinking even.
Speaker 2: Further, disappearing completely into our light bulbs, our doorbells or clothing,
Speaker 2: and our medical monitors.
Speaker 1: Exactly if every physical object we touch is constantly processing
Speaker 1: data and seamlessly connecting to a global network. Are we
Speaker 1: rapidly approaching a future with the concept of being truly
Speaker 1: offline or disconnected simply no longer exists.
Speaker 2: It's definitely something to ponder the next time your refrigerator
Speaker 2: send you a text message.
Speaker 1: Yeah no kidding. So next time you pull out your phone,
Speaker 1: open your laptop, or look at the blinking lights on
Speaker 1: your Wi Fi router, I hope you see past the illusion,
Speaker 1: look past the smoke and mirrors, and appreciate that incredible,
Speaker 1: in visible scaffolding of math working continuously just for you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us on the deep dive.