Seminars [279]

Forthcoming Events [0]

Past Events [279]
 
 

News

 
KMi Seminars
Cargo cult computer science
This event took place on Friday 02 July 2004 at 13:00

 
Prof. Harold Thimbleby Computer Science Department, University of Wales, United Kingdom

Arguably, computers and communications have changed the world more than any other science or technology. Yet there are a lot of failures, some prominent, many minor, and a widening gap between aspirations and reality - with environmental consequences. Borrowing Richard Feynman's criticism of cargo cult science, I discuss some ways we all are doing cargo cult computer science. To paraphrase Feynman: everywhere we have computers that look like they are doing the right things, but they don't work. After pointing out the widespread problems, the emphasis on the seminar will turn to our own behaviour: the evidence of poor science in research computing, and what we can positively do about it.

The talk naturally relates to software engineering, HCI, and computer science research, including "RAE publishing" more generally. Variations of the talk have been presented before, and it is quite controversial and provocative. Come along and contribute or argue!

 
KMi Seminars Event | SSSW 2013, The 10th Summer School on Ontology Engineering and the Semantic Web Journal | 25 years of knowledge acquisition
 

Future Internet is...


Future Internet
With over a billion users, today's Internet is arguably the most successful human artifact ever created. The Internet's physical infrastructure, software, and content now play an integral part of the lives of everyone on the planet, whether they interact with it directly or not. Now nearing its fifth decade, the Internet has shown remarkable resilience and flexibility in the face of ever increasing numbers of users, data volume, and changing usage patterns, but faces growing challenges in meetings the needs of our knowledge society. Globally, many major initiatives are underway to address the need for more scientific research, physical infrastructure investment, better education, and better utilisation of the Internet. Within Japan, USA and Europe major new initiatives have begun in the area.

To succeed the Future Internet will need to address a number of cross-cutting challenges including:

  • Scalability in the face of peer-to-peer traffic, decentralisation, and increased openness

  • Trust when government, medical, financial, personal data are increasingly trusted to the cloud, and middleware will increasingly use dynamic service selection

  • Interoperability of semantic data and metadata, and of services which will be dynamically orchestrated

  • Pervasive usability for users of mobile devices, different languages, cultures and physical abilities

  • Mobility for users who expect a seamless experience across spaces, devices, and velocities