From the Mainframe to Your Pocket
Today your cell phone stores your photos, your messages, and your location, but you can hardly open, copy, or change anything that runs on it. Was it always like this? Who was in charge of programs and data fifty years ago, and what changed along the way? To find out, we are going to tour the history of digital technology with one question at every stage: who is in control?
Mainframe Computers
In the 1950s and 1960s, a computer was the size of a room and cost a fortune. Only governments, big companies, and universities had them. In Mexico, UNAM installed its first computer in 1958, and getting access to it was a privilege reserved for a few researchers.
People did not have a computer of their own: they connected to a shared one from terminals, or handed in their punch cards with instructions and waited for the result. The institution that owned the machine decided who used it, when, and for what.
And the programs? At first, software came almost as a gift with the machine: it was shared among the people who used it, and it could be modified. What was valuable was the equipment (the hardware), not the programs. The data lived on the central computer, under the institution's control.
Order these stages in the history of digital technology and explain what changed in who controls the programs and the data at each one: the personal computer; the large…
Order these stages in the history of digital technology and explain what changed in who controls the programs and the data at each one: the personal computer; the large shared mainframe computers; the smartphone; the commercial internet; cloud services.
The Personal Computer and Hacker Culture
In the 1970s and 1980s, circuits became small and cheap. Personal computers appeared: for the first time, a family, a school, or a business could have one of its own. Control of the machine passed, in large part, to whoever bought it.
Around them, computing clubs were born, where hobbyists traded programs, studied them, and improved them together. This culture of curiosity, of learning by taking things apart, and of sharing is called hacker culture. Here "hacker" does not mean criminal, but someone who enjoys understanding how a system works and making it better. Its practical motto is "Do it yourself": if something doesn't exist or doesn't work for you, you build it or fix it yourself with the help of the community.
But with the personal computer business, something changed: companies discovered that the program could be sold too. Proprietary (or non-free) licenses began: you bought the right to use the program, but you were forbidden to copy it, study it, or modify it, and they did not hand over the source code.
Free Software as a Response
Sharing programs used to be normal; suddenly, doing so became forbidden. For many programmers this was like forbidding a cook from sharing her recipes.
In 1983, Richard Stallman announced the GNU project, a complete operating system made of programs that anyone could use, study, copy, and improve. Shortly afterward, around 1984-1985, he founded the Free Software Foundation and formulated the idea of free software. (Some texts give 1983 and others 1984: it is the announcement versus the start of the work and the founding.) What he sought to recover were the freedoms to:
| Freedom | What it allows |
|---|---|
| Use | Run the program for any purpose |
| Study | Access the source code to understand how it works |
| Modify and improve | Change the code and adapt it to your needs |
| Distribute | Share copies, original or improved |
Later, in 1991, Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel, which together with GNU formed the GNU/Linux system, now found in servers, cell phones, and schools.
In the computer clubs of the nineteen-eighties, sharing programs was the norm; later, proprietary licenses came to forbid copying, studying or modifying programs.…
In the computer clubs of the nineteen-eighties, sharing programs was the norm; later, proprietary licenses came to forbid copying, studying or modifying programs. Explain how that change motivated the birth of the free software movement and which freedoms it sought to recover.
The Internet, the Cell Phone, and the Cloud
In the 1990s, the commercial internet connected the world's computers. Browsers, email, and web pages arrived. Many services were offered "for free," but in exchange companies began to store information about the people who used them.
In the 2000s the smartphone arrived: a computer in your pocket, always connected, with a camera, GPS, and microphone. In Mexico it is now the main device: according to the ENDUTIH 2023, 97.1% of users connect with a cell phone and only 44.0% with a computer. But the cell phone usually comes with closed programs and app stores controlled by a few companies.
With cloud services, your files, photos, and documents are no longer on your device, but on a company's computers somewhere else. It is convenient: you open your information from any device. But there is a similarity to the mainframe: once again it depends on someone else whether your data and programs remain available.
Order these stages in the history of digital technology and explain what changed in who controls the programs and the data at each one: the personal computer; the large…
Order these stages in the history of digital technology and explain what changed in who controls the programs and the data at each one: the personal computer; the large shared mainframe computers; the smartphone; the commercial internet; cloud services.
Who Has Access? The Gap Throughout History
Every stage left people out. Mainframes were for a few institutions. The personal computer cost too much for most families. Today the cell phone is the most widespread device, but access is still unequal: according to the ENDUTIH 2023, 85.5% of the urban population uses the internet compared with 66% of the rural population.
Having or not having access changes opportunities for study and work: someone without a connection cannot do an online assignment, a government procedure, or a video call for a job interview. This digital divide has three dimensions that overlap in Mexico: socioeconomic (how much the equipment and service cost), regional (rural and Indigenous areas with less infrastructure), and gender (less access, or fewer skills encouraged, for girls and women). A young woman from a low-income rural community can suffer all three at once.
Free software helps: it doesn't charge a license fee per copy, it runs on old equipment, and it can be adapted to a community's language and needs. But it doesn't solve everything: without a connection, electricity, and skills, many people are still left out.
In the computer clubs of the nineteen-eighties, sharing programs was the norm; later, proprietary licenses came to forbid copying, studying or modifying programs.…
In the computer clubs of the nineteen-eighties, sharing programs was the norm; later, proprietary licenses came to forbid copying, studying or modifying programs. Explain how that change motivated the birth of the free software movement and which freedoms it sought to recover.