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DOI:10.1145/1995376.1995380
http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm
Jeannette m. Wing
PCast; Barbara
Liskov Keynote
Jeannette M. Wing discusses her PCAST presentation about
the importance of computer science and its impact. Valerie Barr
shares highlights from Barbara Liskov’s keynote at Grace Hopper.
Jeannette m. Wing “talking with PCast”
http://cacm.acm.org/ blogs/blog-cacm/98818 sept. 15, 2010 I was honored to have the opportunity to talk with the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) on September 2, 2010, at the Keck Center in Washing- ton, D.C. I opened with a 20-minute
presentation, which was followed by a
question and answer period. The topic
of my session was networking and information technology, since PCAST is
doing a review of the Networking and
Information Technology Research and
Development (NITRD) Program, but I
chose to speak more broadly about the
importance of computer science and
its impact on our economy, society,
and other science and engineering disciplines.
I told three stories—The Google
Story, Model Checking, and Machine
Learning—as a way to illustrate the im-
portance of sustained federal funding
of basic research in computer science,
the rapid pace of innovation in our
field, and the deep scientific contribu-
tions we offer besides our obvious tech-
nological ones. Using my three drivers
of computing framework, Technolo-
gy-Society-Science, I presented some
trends for the future including: Big
Data, Cell+Cloud, Cyber-Physical Sys-
tems, Socially Intelligent Computing,
and emerging computing substrates
under Technology; “A7: Anywhere Any-
time Affordable Access to Anything by
Anyone Authorized” under Society; and
questions like “What is computable?”
(see “Five Deep Questions in Comput-
ing”) under Science.
