Foundation
Nine chapters from what a computer actually does to the fairness tradeoffs baked into the algorithms shaping people’s lives, computing fundamentals, algorithms and data structures, software engineering, networks, databases, cybersecurity, embedded sensing, machine learning, and technology ethics.
The first level of the Technology track, and no prior programming or computer science background is assumed. It opens with what a computer is actually doing underneath the abstractions, then works through the layers every technologist needs a working sense of, algorithms and data structures, how software is actually built and shipped, how machines talk to each other over a network, how data is stored and queried, and how systems are attacked and defended. The second half turns to sensing and intelligence (embedded systems reading the physical world, and the machine learning systems increasingly making decisions from that data) closing with the ethical stakes of deploying those systems on real people. Four interactive models, a mission scenario in every chapter grounded in real technology history, and an open-response exercise read by ATLAS.
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Continue beyond the horizon
Unlock Chapters 2–9 of Technology Foundation.
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Chapters
- 01What Computing IsThe one idea that separates every computer you have ever used from the room-sized machine that had to be physically rewired, by hand, every time someone wanted it to solve a different problem.20 min2 quick checks1 mission
- 02Algorithms & Data StructuresHow fast "fast enough" actually is, measured precisely, and the December 2011 disclosure that turned a hash table’s worst-case slowdown into a way to take a server down with a single crafted request.21 min1 model2 quick checks1 mission Unlock for $24.99
- 03Programming & Software EngineeringFrom source code to a running program, and the 45 minutes in which one incomplete software deployment cost a trading firm $440 million and very nearly the company itself.21 min1 quick checks1 mission Unlock for $24.99
- 04Computer Networks & the InternetHow data actually gets from one machine to another across the internet, and the October 2016 attack that took down Twitter, Spotify and dozens of other sites without touching any of their own servers at all.21 min1 model2 quick checks1 mission Unlock for $24.99
- 05Databases & Data ManagementWhat a database actually promises when it says a transaction is "committed", and the six hours in January 2017 when a company nearly lost that promise entirely, saved by one accidental snapshot.20 min1 quick checks1 mission Unlock for $24.99
- 06Cybersecurity & CryptographyHow encryption actually keeps a secret, and the two years a single missing bounds check sat inside the software protecting a majority of the internet’s servers before anyone noticed.21 min2 quick checks1 mission Unlock for $24.99
- 07Sensors & Embedded SystemsHow the physical world becomes a number a computer can act on, and the $327.6 million spacecraft lost because a number was correct, and simply in the wrong unit, for the entire nine-and-a-half-month trip to Mars.20 min1 model2 quick checks1 mission Unlock for $24.99
- 08Artificial Intelligence & Machine LearningHow a neural network actually learns a pattern from data, and the chatbot that went from friendly small talk to denying historical atrocities in under 24 hours, without a single line of its own code changing.21 min1 model2 quick checks1 mission Unlock for $24.99
- 09Technology Ethics & the FutureA courtroom risk-assessment tool that never used race as an input, defended by its maker as fair, and accused by journalists of racial bias, both using real numbers, both mathematically correct, about the same tool at the same time.22 min3 quick checks1 mission Unlock for $24.99