Are you there Computer? It's me, User.
To begin our understanding of computer hardware, we will first study the physical components that have been designed for user interaction. What types of parts are we talking about? Well, you are staring at one right now.
Peripherals
A peripheral is any piece of equipment that connects to a computing device that enables a flow of information between you, the user, and the computer. A screen, mouse, keyboard, headphones, speakers, microphone, projector, scanner, usb cable, and printer are all examples. Peripherals are essential to the idea of the human-computer interface. They work with our human senses and allow us to easily feed and receive information from a computer. More specifically, there are two types of peripherals:
- input devices: devices that let users feed information into the computer (ex. a keyboard)
- output devices: devices that allow computers to feed information to the user (ex. a monitor)
A trend in modern computing has been to create compact devices with multi-purpose peripherals. The touchscreen on your smartphone, for example, is a peripheral that acts as both an input and output device. More recent advances in computing have focused primarily on touch, such as the 3D touch feature on the iPhone 6S, which is breaking the latest frontier in peripheral technology.
Input/Output Processing:
When we refer to Input/Output, known simply as I/O, we are referring to the information processing system that works in tandem with peripherals. This system interprets the information that is transferred through the peripherals and breaks it down as specific instructions for your CPU to read. Clicking a mouse, swiping on a screen, and turning the knob on a speaker all send signals to our computing devices that instruct it to perform it's next action. We won't go too deep into how this system works, just know it is a buffer between you and the heart (or brain, however you want to conceptualize it) of your computer... THE CPU. What the heck is a CPU? I'm glad you asked.