Los Angeles ACM Chapter Meeting

Wednesday, January 3, 2001

INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM!

Hosted By Roger Mills

 Where have we been and where are we going? 

 Last January the Y2K event was passed without disaster as we entered the final year of the second millennium. Our troubles were over. We hold Presidential elections every four years so what could go wrong? 

 In 2001 we enter the first year of the third millennium and it is worth a celebration.

 Our January program features our seasoned Master of Ceremonies, Roger Mills, and sterling cast of local talent. Come and hear tales of where we have been, what we have done, and predictions of what we might do. Scheduled speakers so far are Lee Schmidt, Bill Cook, Ed Manderfield and Mike Walsh. 

 You may look at this list and say, "I can do better". This may be true so call or email Roger Mills and ask for your five-minute time slot to tell your story. Don't delay!

 Speaking slots will be limited so the program doesn't last till the fourth millennium.

Into The New Millennium!

     With Roger Mills as the Master of Ceremonies and presentations by Mike Walsh, Ed Manderfield, Bill Cook, Lee Schmidt, John Cosgrove and Mark Burgin, the January Chapter meeting entered the true third millennium.
     Mike Walsh recounted some predictions on the future of microcomputers written by Dr. Caxton Foster of the University of Massachusetts for the ACM's 25th Anniversary issue (in 1972) of Communications of the ACM. See the separate article on page 6.
     Ed Manderfield discussed where the human race has been since the hunter-gatherer era until today and then gave his projections for what he expects will and will not happen in the next thousand years. He said the last century had the most technological advance-ment in human history with the development of cars, airplanes, computers and atomic energy and with communication available everywhere in the world. For the next thousand years Ed predicts that there will be no transparent steel. On the other hand he expects that large colony ships will leave the solar system to explore the galaxy. He presented diagrams and information about proposed space colonies in earth orbit that would demonstrate the technology required for these types of exploratory missions. Ed says that he does not expect teleportation to come about in 1,000 years; there will be no "Beam me up, Scotty". Unfortunately, he believes we will still have war. There are encouraging developments in international organizations and agreements both to prevent war and to improve the environment. He asks "Will they keep us from blowing ourselves apart?" We certainly hope so. 
     Lee Schmidt proposed that the on-line world become a separate government overlaid over all of the governments of the world. He says, "Think of area codes, why can't we do overlays of governments?" It is time for national sovereignty of the Internet. Its capitol would be in cyberspace and it would own its own equipment housed in "embassies" in the geographical nations. The embassy land would be recognized as territory of the cyberspace government. The Internet government would establish trade relationships and tariffs and issue passports. The government would have the domain of .one. As for any problems, these are all simply implementation details. 
     Bill Cook gave a short biography of Harry Strauss, a man who greatly aided Eckert and Mauchly, with both money and advice, in making a business of the first electronic computer. His field was totalisators that calculated racetrack odds, which were greatly improved by the use of computers. Strauss backed them so that computers could eliminate some of the difficult problems in calculating up-to-date odds. Bill said it shows that "Annoyance is sometimes the mother of invention". 
     John Cosgrove presented a very insightful dis-cussion of the effects of the law on software. There has been an explosion of computer-related litigation; costs of litigation are rising faster and are larger than the cost of coding. Software must now be designed with litigation in mind. Developers should assume that litigation will be brought against them and determine how they would defend against the legal action. The result should be simply good engineering applied to software. (Most engineered systems are comprehensively defined; few software intensive systems are.) He said that, as in the case of the automobile industry, the threat of litigation may be the ultimate "forcing function" that drives the institutional acceptance of good engineering process in software development. A humorous description of computer-intensive technical claims is that all of the parties are lying but none of them know it, and this is particularly applicable to legal disputes. 
     UCLA Professor Mark Burgin gave a scientific talk on computability, recursive and super-recursive algorithms. He said that many times in the past practice has gone ahead of theory, but now there are new theories of computing and new types of computers and currently the theories are ahead of the actual computers that might demonstrate them. 
     The DATA-LINK announcement listed Lee Schmidt, Bill Cook, Ed Manderfield and Mike Walsh as speakers and suggested that new volunteers might do better. John Cosgrove and Mark Burgin demonstrated that this was true. 
     This was the fifth meeting of the LA Chapter year and was attended by about 15 persons. A good time was had by all present.