We all know what a computer is: it's the gray box in your bedroom attached to a display, a keyboard, and a mouse. Your laptop is also a computer. But did you know that your tablet, your phone, and your videogame console are also computers? Finally, every smart device such as smartwatches are either computers or have computers in them.

If this is surprising, that might be because we are using the word "computer" more generally than you are used to. In this course, a computer is basically any machine that can take some information and perform operations on them. For example, a computer can take two numbers, add them together, and display the result.

In this chapter, we introduce ourselves to computers by describing what computers are and what they do at a high level. We will also introduce the Logicwalk Computer Simulator (LWCS).