Hardware for Not Yet Techies

Computer hardware is generally understood as the physical (that is, "hard") portion of a technological system. Your computer needs software to work, but programs need physical silicon chips, wires, hard drives and other materials that constitute hardware.

We all live in a physical world, as Madonna reminded us many years ago, and although some people want to believe that we are ultimately spiritual beings -- and they may be right -- here on Earth in this universe we are bounded by the three dimensions of space and the "fourth dimension" of time. Computer hardware is dependent on this.

And time and space manifest themselves according to the laws of physics and chemistry as energy and mass -- which are different forms of the same thing, according to Albert Einstein, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki know that he's right.

Hardware includes computer processing units (CPUs), mother board, hard drive, modem, mouse, keyboard, monitors, cables, printers, Network Interface Cards (NICs), routers, bridges, servers, dumb terminals, large mainframes, fiber optic cables -- even wireless equipment.

Because although wireless communication across computers and cell phones is invisible to us, it's still physical and still relies upon hardware to send and receive it.

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