ABSTRACT
Computers-whether they are abacus, slide rules, hand-held cal-
culators, laptops, desktops or supercomputers-have played an
epochal role in human lives. Everything that we do today involves
some calculation or data processing: the call we make in our
cell phones involves information processing, the video game we
play involves some form of calculation, and the TV animation we
watch is based on processing voluminous amounts of data. Even
this chapter is written with a word processor that processed the
information contained herein with a computer. Suffice it to say then
that computers rule the roost and pervade our lives in every way
possible.
