Do you think that computing was a hard road until now? Watch Trillions, and you’ll understand why we need to come fast with new technologies, to make our data networks more like our bodies and less like traditional systems.

Makes me want to go back to the age of mail and cassette tapes. Or fast-forward until they iron out all the bugs. Somebody think. Fast. [Likecool]

The Guardian has put together a fantastic year-by-year slideshow, including video clips and factoids, about how the Internet we know and adore came to be. Check it out and be sure to share your favourite parts. Mine is in 1971 in the form of the first computer virus, the Creeper. That and the fact that there’s some disagreement about which day should actually be celebrated as the Internet’s birthday.

But before you run off to explore history, how about a nice and loud “Happy Birthday!” for our darling? [Guardian]

Using camouflage netting and trompe l’oeil, they brilliantly disguised the enormous plant as something completely benign. Just look at these before and after pictures! Fortunately, it all ended up being unnecessary, but what a cool example of creative thinking in a time of crisis. [Think or Thwim, Thanks, Jason!]

One look at this television and it’s no surprise to learn that its designer was also responsible for the distinctive Citroen DS which was first produced in 1955. It features a 19-inch screen with white mask, in a tapered-hood case in deep purple with a gold trim. The controls and speaker sit in the rectangular box below and the screen can be turned independently through 150-degrees as well as angled vertically.

The set is also “dual standard”, with capability to show 441 lines (which became the standard from 1952) along with a high definition facility of 819 lines, meaning it is high-definition even by today’s standards. This system began in France in 1949 but never really got off the ground. Bennett-Levy speculates that Teleavia may have been trying to “future-proof” the P111 in case the French government decided to resurrect the service.

This bad boy sold for $US3825 at auction, and it doesn’t even have HDMI in. Good luck hooking an Xbox 360 up to this thing, sucker! [GizMag via NotCot.org]

Basically, these stone markers were a like a primitive GPS—and the accuracy was quite astounding. Researcher Tom Brooks explains:

‘The sides of some of the triangles are over 100 miles across on each side and yet the distances are accurate to within 100 metres. You cannot do that by chance.

‘So advanced, sophisticated and accurate is the geometrical surveying now discovered, that we must review fundamentally the perception of our Stone Age forebears as primitive, or conclude that they received some form of external guidance.

Yes, “external guidance”. Egyptians, Mayans, Stone Age Britons—it’s got to be aliens. Either that, or Google has invented time travel conquer ancient landscapes starting with “Pangea Maps”. [Daily Mail via Digg]

It was about freaking time. Turing, a father of computer science and WWII code-breaker, confessed to having sex with a man, was prosecuted by the British government for being gay, given experimental chemical castration as a “treatment” and then committed suicide in 1954. Ridiculous, is right.

So after thousands signed the recent petition, UK PM Gordon Brown had this to say:

While Mr Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Brown is dead on, it can’t be changed. Nothing will change the fact that this man was physically harmed (if you can even call it that) for his sexual orientation, but acknowledging it happened and saying sorry for it is a step in remembering this incredible geek and his legacy. This seriously makes our day. [BBC]

Turing committed suicide two years after his prosecution in 1954, but was before given experimental chemical castration as a “treatment”. He is most well known for his Nazi enigma code breaking work for the British during the second World War and his helping establish a test to measure the intelligence of a machine which is now known as a Turing Test.

So far more than 5500 signatures have been collected on the Downing Street petition started by computer scientist John Graham-Cumming. Author Ian McEwan put his John Hancock on the petition. I’d sign up but it looks like you need a UK address. [BBC]

Remember this? When Steve had to put a live feed of Bill Gates up in front of a seething mass of fanboys in exchange for $US150 million to save Apple from certain death?

It happened back on August 6, 1997. The video is pretty amazing to watch when we’ve got more recent and triumphant Apple keynotes to compare it to. When was the last time the crowd seemed ready to jump on stage and beat Steve up?

And you’ve just got to love the reaction to a huge, Big-Brotheresque Gates appearing above Jobs, swooping in to the rescue.

And who could have predicted where things would go from there? 12 years later and Apple sure doesn’t need any help from Uncle Bill. Also, Steve no longer wears those stupid vests. [9 to 5 Mac via CrunchGear]

Have you noticed anything different about your inbox this week? Where are all the weirdly threatening chain letters from family members you’ve never met? The hyperventilating urgent FWD: FWD: FWD: messages about Barack Obama’s secret Hellenic Polytheism? Your tri-weekly update on the power of prayer, told through the perspective of your fourth cousin’s cat? They are gone, is where, stemmed at the source. CompuServe Classic is dead.

I won’t try to be elegiac here, since I only really remember CompuServe’s service as that quasi-internetlike thing that my parents would let me use on our Gateway for about two minutes at a stretch, as we watched the minutely charges rack up and I desperately tried to figure out where the hell the games were. But those of you of a different generation vintage, with your own super-numerical email addresses, memories of horrifying, unexpected phone bills and bitterness towards the ungrateful kids of today with their “broadband” and “wireless,” feel free to reflect in the comments. [Basex via Beyond the Beyond]

Using oral histories from those who experienced the creation and development of the integrated circuit, the Computer History Museum compiled a documentary on this invention that irrefutably changed the world. The year-long exhibit will feature examples of early transistors, the vacuum tubes they replaced, and early integrated circuits, as well as explaining who was behind the inventions, especially the so-called “Traitorous Eight” engineers that largely developed the IC back in 1959.

After departing from the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, engineer Jean Hoerni and the rest of the “Traitorous Eight” moved to Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. There, Hoerni developed the planar process which would become the foundation for the integrated circuit. The planar process involves using an oxide layer to protect the joining of the p-n semiconductors on a silicon chip, named because of the flat surface in which it results. The planar process is more electrically efficient than the then-common method of stripping the oxide layer for fear of contamination, but more importantly, the design allowed for a complete circuit to be built on a silicon chip.

Later in 1959, fellow “Traitorous Eight” member Robert Noyce demonstrated that the combination of the oxide coating and the flat surface allowed for a complete integrated electrical circuit, with diodes, transistors, resistors and capacitors, to be built within a planar chip. Simultaneously, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments independently developed a similar idea based on the planar process, though his was based on a germanium chip, rather than Noyce’s silicon. This new integrated circuit, called the “monolithic integratic chip,” is the basis for pretty much everything we love today, including computers, radio, television, audio equipment, cars and anything else that uses a microchip.

It’s no exaggeration to call the IC an invention that profoundly changed the world. Microchip technology has exploded since its invention 50 years ago, and few (if any) other inventions have become so essential worldwide in such a short amount of time. The technology is kind of tough to wrap your mind around, but the Computer History Museum’s exhibit sounds like an illuminating look at how Silicon Valley and our favourite hobby began. [Computer History Museum]