Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
However, long before informatics was offered as a course of study, the subject
of '
Cybernetics
' was taught as part of the theory and practice of programming in
the MIT Electronic Systems Laboratory (Wiener
1948
). Its founder, Norbert Weiner,
taught this course. He defined it as the study of control and communication in the
animal and the machine. This also included social and other multi-element systems
that involve feedback (e.g. control) and objectives (e.g. survival).
The studies of Informatics and Cybernetics seem to be similar and both include
the objectives of the Grand Challenge (2005) as described next.
8.1.1
Meeting the Criteria
The organisers of the Grand Challenge (2005) gave 13 criteria for the grand challenge
so that it would help potential authors to address the right issues. Each one of the
criteria related to social or people sensitive issues. The study of behaviour in society
is linked to the grand challenge specification and argued for as follows:
1.
It arises from scientific curiosity about the foundation, the nature or the limits of
a scientific discipline.
The proposal of socially sensitive computing, oddly enough, arises from the question
of why, after 60 years of effort, millions of man hours and technology including
silicon machines that do 1000
Terabytes of storage, we
have still not even addressed many of the important functions of a human brain. The
brain is a device that looks like a bowl of porridge and consists of only 15 Gigacells
working at about 50 cycles per second (Edwards
2014
).
+
Giga-flops with 1000
+
2.
It gives scope for engineering ambition to build something that has never been
seen before.
The proposal of socially sensitive computing could suggest new ways of looking
at current problems. New types of computation might arise, and thus new engines
could be created along different principles; notions such as 'a structure malleable
program' that will reform its processes (say, between parallel and sequential) to best
create a single efficient solution.
3.
It will be obvious how far and when the challenge has been met (or not).
The challenge will have been addressed when it is no longer a problem that the
world cannot be classified or partitioned. This need to predefine the world is a
necessary starting point for all current computer programming. Once done it confines
the possibilities of the program to a very limited point of view. Because of this
limitation the challenge will never be met, but it is still worth trying in order to see
how far we can get.
4.
It has enthusiastic support from (almost) the entire research community, even
those who do not participate and do not benefit from it.
