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Technology evolution

Five readings on how computing became what it is. Each one walks six to eight events in order, with the primary source named for every dated claim. Forty to ninety minutes per reading.

How the Internet Works guided path map

An ordered sequence of 6 events covering 45 minutes.

How the Internet Works guided path An ordered sequence of 8 dated stops covering 45 minutes. Each card lists a stop number, the year, the title and the publisher. The final stop is emphasised in brand red. HOW THE INTERNET WORKS Source: Computer History Museum Packets, naming, web, and the modern transport layer. next row STOP 1 1969 ARPANET first link computerhistory.org STOP 2 1983 TCP/IP cutover onARPANET datatracker.ietf.org STOP 3 1983 DNS specified (RFC882-883) datatracker.ietf.org STOP 4 1989 BGP-1 published (RFC1105) datatracker.ietf.org STOP 5 1991 World Wide Web publicrelease w3.org STOP 6 1997 HTTP/1.1 standardised(RFC 2068) datatracker.ietf.org STOP 7 2015 HTTP/2 published (RFC7540) datatracker.ietf.org STOP 8 2022 HTTP/3 over QUIC (RFC9114) datatracker.ietf.org 8 stops, in chronological order Arrows mark the next stop in the path, not direct historical causality. The final stop is emphasised in brand red.

Arrows mark the next step in the path, not direct historical causality. Source: Computer History Museum.

How the Internet Works

6 events, 45 minutes, GCSE level

Follow the journey from ARPANET to the modern web. Understand packet switching, TCP/IP, DNS, and HTTP - the protocols that power everything online.

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AI: From Turing to Transformers guided path map

An ordered sequence of 8 events covering 60 minutes.

AI: From Turing to Transformers guided path An ordered sequence of 7 dated stops covering 60 minutes. Each card lists a stop number, the year, the title and the publisher. The final stop is emphasised in brand red. AI: FROM TURING TO TRANSFORMERS Source: Computer History Museum From the imitation game to the architecture that scaled. next row STOP 1 1950 Turing's imitationgame paper turingarchive.org STOP 2 1956 Dartmouth summerworkshop stanford.edu STOP 3 1986 Backpropagationpopularised nature.com STOP 4 1997 LSTM by Hochreiter andSchmidhuber mit.edu STOP 5 2012 AlexNet wins ImageNet image-net.org STOP 6 2014 Sequence to sequencelearning arxiv.org/abs/1409.3215 STOP 7 2017 Transformerarchitecture arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762 7 stops, in chronological order Arrows mark the next stop in the path, not direct historical causality. The final stop is emphasised in brand red.

Arrows mark the next step in the path, not direct historical causality. Source: Computer History Museum.

AI: From Turing to Transformers

8 events, 60 minutes, A-level

The complete history of artificial intelligence from the 1950 Turing Test to modern large language models. Understand the breakthroughs, winters, and paradigm shifts.

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Cybersecurity: Threats and Defences guided path map

An ordered sequence of 7 events covering 90 minutes.

Cybersecurity: Threats and Defences guided path An ordered sequence of 7 dated stops covering 90 minutes. Each card lists a stop number, the year, the title and the publisher. The final stop is emphasised in brand red. CYBERSECURITY: THREATS AND DEFENCES Source: Computer History Museum From cryptographic primitives to assurance frameworks. next row STOP 1 1976 Diffie-Hellman keyexchange ieee.org STOP 2 1977 DES standardised (FIPS46) csrc.nist.gov STOP 3 1988 Morris worm; CERTfounded cert.org STOP 4 1999 TLS 1.0 (RFC 2246) datatracker.ietf.org STOP 5 2001 AES standardised (FIPS197) csrc.nist.gov STOP 6 2014 NIST CybersecurityFramework 1.0 csrc.nist.gov STOP 7 2020 Zero TrustArchitecture, SP csrc.nist.gov 7 stops, in chronological order Arrows mark the next stop in the path, not direct historical causality. The final stop is emphasised in brand red.

Arrows mark the next step in the path, not direct historical causality. Source: Computer History Museum.

Cybersecurity: Threats and Defences

7 events, 90 minutes, professional

From public key cryptography to GDPR. Major incidents, encryption standards, and the regulatory frameworks that shape modern security.

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Software Development: Waterfall to DevOps guided path map

An ordered sequence of 6 events covering 75 minutes.

Software Development: Waterfall to DevOps guided path An ordered sequence of 7 dated stops covering 75 minutes. Each card lists a stop number, the year, the title and the publisher. The final stop is emphasised in brand red. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: WATERFALL TO DEVOPS Source: Computer History Museum Waterfall, agile, version control, cloud, containers. next row STOP 1 1968 NATO softwareengineering conference ieee.org STOP 2 1970 Royce's waterfallpaper ieee.org STOP 3 2001 Agile Manifesto,Snowbird agilemanifesto.org STOP 4 2005 Git released byTorvalds git-scm.com STOP 5 2006 AWS S3 and EC2 launch aws.amazon.com STOP 6 2009 DevOps coined oreilly.com STOP 7 2013 Docker open-sourced docker.com 7 stops, in chronological order Arrows mark the next stop in the path, not direct historical causality. The final stop is emphasised in brand red.

Arrows mark the next step in the path, not direct historical causality. Source: Computer History Museum.

Software Development: Waterfall to DevOps

6 events, 75 minutes, undergraduate

How software development practices evolved from sequential waterfall to agile and DevOps. Understand design patterns, microservices, and container orchestration.

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Standards Bodies: How Technology Gets Standardised guided path map

An ordered sequence of 6 events covering 40 minutes.

Standards Bodies: How Technology Gets Standardised guided path An ordered sequence of 7 dated stops covering 40 minutes. Each card lists a stop number, the year, the title and the publisher. The final stop is emphasised in brand red. STANDARDS BODIES: HOW TECHNOLOGY GETS STANDARDISED Source: Computer History Museum How technology gets standardised, from ISO to W3C to IETF. next row STOP 1 1947 ISO founded, Geneva iso.org STOP 2 1963 IEEE incorporated ieee.org STOP 3 1986 IETF first meeting ietf.org STOP 4 1994 W3C founded at MIT w3.org STOP 5 1997 ECMAScript Edition 1 ecma-international.org STOP 6 2012 OAuth 2.0, RFC 6749 datatracker.ietf.org STOP 7 2017 WebAssembly 1.0 inbrowsers w3.org 7 stops, in chronological order Arrows mark the next stop in the path, not direct historical causality. The final stop is emphasised in brand red.

Arrows mark the next step in the path, not direct historical causality. Source: Computer History Museum.

Standards Bodies: How Technology Gets Standardised

6 events, 40 minutes, A-level

ISO, IEEE, IETF, W3C - understand how standards are created and why they matter. From telecommunications to the web.

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