Work in progress - putting a course in context

An undergraduate course can be characterized by its breadth and its depth. Breadth is a measure of the range of topics covered and depth is a measure of the rigor with which they are taught. To provide students with the tools necessary to help them find employment, undergraduate courses in computer science concentrate on depth at the expense of breadth. Consequently, students often lack a historical perspective on their own subject and do not know how it developed. All too frequently students are not even aware of alternative approaches to computer-based problem solving. No where is this truer than in computer architecture education. This work in progress describes the construction of a Website that provides a background for computer architecture courses by putting material in a historic and social context and by introducing alternative computing mechanisms such as neural networks, analog computers and quantum computers.