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WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
Who is Don Cowan?
47 years at Waterloo Founding Chair Computer Science Assoc Dir/Computing Centre in 60s (now IST) Software engineering research Helped found some of the spinoffs
WATCOM (iAnywhere), LivePage (Oracle) Retired but still active in research
Direct Computer Systems Group
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
1967/68 – IBM 360/75 The “Red Room” (in MC) Housed Canada’s largest computer
The Past - 40 years ago
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
1967/68 – IBM 360/75 Backup for NASA space shots In several science fiction films Solid-state transistors – same as now
Same function as today but biggerSolid state electronics around about 7 years in 67Early machines - IBM 1620/7090Transistor - ½ cm in diameterToday CPUs + memory like a speck of dust (mote)Before 1960 - vacuum tubes (light bulbs with a
personality)
The Past - 40 years ago
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
1967/68 - Central Processor 1967 - Everyone used – IBM 360/75
clock speed 1 MHz - $3,000,000 2007 - Personal computer more powerful
Laptop clock speed 2 GHz - $1,400
The Past – some comparisons
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
1967/68 - Random Access Memory 1 megabyte - $2,000,000 - footprint – 3m x 1m 1 gigabyte $2,000,000,000 footprint 3,000 m2 (10 homes) 2007 – 1 gigabyte $9 thumb-size or less
The Past – some comparisons
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
1967/68 - Hard drives 1967 – 8 drives X 28MB = 224MB - $500,000 Footprint – 4m x 1m 120 GB - $250,000,000 – 2,000m2 (7 homes) 2007 – 120 GB - $150 10cm X 10cm
The Past – some comparisons
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
Celebrating software
WATFOR/WATFIV/WATBOL/Janet … (Graham et al) High-speed debugging compilers/PC LANs
MAPLE (Geddes, Gonnet) World’s leader in algebraic computation
New Oxford English Dictionary (Tompa, Gonnet) First search engine, advance in tagging languages (XML)
Sparse matrix software (George) Solving science/engineering problems faster
Elliptic Curve Cryptography (Mullin, Vanstone, Agnew) Latest advance in secure information exchange
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
Hardware (faster, smaller, cheaper) In the 80s predicting $1,000 computers Premiums in cereal boxes (flash drives) Hardware as a commodity
The $100 laptop Ray Kurzweil “The Singularity is Near”
predicts … Exponential growth Machine as extension of man
We’ve come a long way
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
Information is the lifeblood of an organization Yet building/evolving information systems is complex
just plain hard Only relatively simple software a commodity
Word processors, spreadsheets, blogs, wikis, facebook, search engines …
Software engineering is still a black art Still depend on the programming paradigm
Only the language has changed not the techniques Hardware has gone from soldering to photo lithography The science/engineering of software has not kept pace
with hardware
But have we?
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
Interesting to compare with other areas Information technology harder than
relativity/quantum physics? Relativity/quantum physics knows the answer
not the question (Lederman) Information technology needs to know both
the answer and the question Because the possible uses of IT appear boundless Why we need requirements engineering
We still have a long way to go What are the consequences?
A comparison
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
Disenfranchising much of society SMEs, NGOs, social support organizations,
even the health system Yet the Web is a powerful medium
the medium of choice for the foreseeable future Not really using IT to benefit society
compared to what we could do We don’t understand the impact of software
on users What might be done?
The consequences
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
Meet the challenges and expectations created by the web’s ability to create and distribute massive amounts of interactive information 1. Lower technology barriers to software
requirements, development and evolution 2. Understand the new IT paradigms such as
Web 2.0, mapping, social networking and effective use
3. Research and implement new approaches to sustainability of web-based information systems
What might be done?
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
1. Lowering technology barriers To implementation, evolution and
maintenance of web-based systems A paradigm shift - change the way systems are built WIDE toolkit
Complete specification of a web-based system - both services and control structures
Completing forms and then transforming the resultant data structures into “code.”
Based on XML & XSL Service frameworks include I/O forms, mapping, agents,
search, push, content, security … Domain experts can build/maintain/evolve systems Changes cost almost the same at any stage
What might be done?
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
2. Understand the new IT paradigms Web 2.0 – what does it mean
Collaboration - Wikinomics Mapping (most uses of mapping are simple) Social networking - blogs, wikis, facebook Semantic search - more intelligent search Sensible security & privacy, safety Mobility & context awareness
Location, proximity, time etc Active user participation in system build Rapid application development
What might be done?
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
3. Research and implement new approaches to sustainability of web- based information systems. Data sustainability – keep it fresh
Distributed and decentralized Networks of trust
Technical sustainability Manage change – it’s inevitable!!!
Financial sustainability - business models Identify sources of $$ - social enterprise Partnerships
What might be done?
WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future
Using these 3 guidelines Have built about 40 web-based operational
information systems.
Four examples Stewardship Tracking System Project NOW – Immigrant Portal Volunteer Action Centre Performance Indicator Monitoring System
What have we done?
com
Stewardship Tracking Systemhttp://comap.ca/stsContact dwm@csg.uwaterloo.ca for a userid and password.
Similarities of Other Approaches versus STS
Search Engine
Information Retrieval
WEB Site
Public Information
Facebook / Blog
Activity Records
Network of Friends
Document Sharin
g
Document Repository
Mapping
Role-basedSecurity
Project NOW (Newcomers Online Waterloo)http://www.newcomerswaterloo.ca
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