Computers often present themselves as incredible complex, powerful machines. In reality, they're fairly simple and do very little. They just do very little several billions of times per second. I am not an expert on computer architecture, but I've recently taken the time to learn how simple computers work down at the metal - WAY down on the metal. In this session, I'll share what I learned about how the machines that power our society work. We'll talk about all the fundamental building blocks of a computer's architecture, how to build your own versions of those blocks, and how a basic assembly language emerges from the design.