Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing

Edited by:
  • Peter J. Denning &
  • Robert M. Metcalfe
Copernicus: 1997313Pp. $24.30,£16.95.

How is this for an opener? “By 2047 almost all information will be in cyberspace — including a large percentage of knowledge and creative works. All information about physical objects, including humans, buildings, processes and organizations, will be on-line. This trend is both desirable and inevitable.”

This statement comes from the opening essay of this book, written by Gordon Bell, perhaps the most influential computer architect of his generation, and James N. Gray, a database guru, both now senior researchers at Microsoft. Not many computer scientists or Web-surfers would dispute any of this, and it sets the tone for a compelling book. But don't be misled by the opening: what sets the book apart from the general run of technology-future books is the authority of its contributors and the tone of restraint that pervades it, when compared with the genre's usual ludicrous extrapolations.

For example, in the same essay Bell and Gray remind us that, despite the plummeting cost per bit and ever-increasing capacity of storage media, “paper is likely to be with us for ever⃛ a lasting, irreplaceable graphical user interface. We know of no technology in 1997 to attack paper's broad use.” What is more, they point out, acid-free paper has a longevity of more than 500 years, hundreds more than any known magnetic or optical storage medium.

Beyond Calculation is the edited proceedings of a conference organized in 1997 to celebrate the golden jubilee of the Association of Computing Machinery, the professional society of US information processing. The theme of the conference, as indicated by the book's title, is that computers have already gone far beyond numerical calculation, and have vastly further to go in the next half century. The conference organizers have done a fine job in assembling a star cast of leading computer technology researchers and people on the fringe of computing. The 20 essays in this fin de siècle collection have been seamlessly edited, and only three or four of the papers are evident pot-boilers.

The book is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with technology, computing and human identity, and business and economic issues. Of the six chapters in the technology stream, one of the highlights is an essay by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown, both senior researchers at the famous Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, California. In the 1970s PARC researchers came up with the graphical user interface that 15 years later, as Microsoft Windows, made Bill Gates's fortune. Now workers at PARC have moved on to what they call “calm technology” — when computers become invisible and disappear into the woodwork. They foresee “clocks that find out the correct time after a power failure, kids’ toys that are ever-refreshed with new software and vocabularies, paint that cleans off dust and notifies you of intruders, and walls that selectively dampen sounds.” Got all that, Bill?

The first of the six essays on computers and human identity is by the eminent social researcher Sherry Turkle, who reflects on what it means for kids to grow up in a culture of video games and simulation. “Fifty years ago,” she reminds us, “a child's world was full of things that could be understood in simple, mechanical ways. A bicycle could be understood in terms of its pedals and gears and a wind-up car in terms of its clockwork springs.” But lever the back off a Gameboy, and the child is confronted by an impenetrable chip. Thus children are led to psychological rather than mechanical explanations of their playthings; in effect, they perceive machines as having a kind of inner life — “more alive than a car, but less alive than a bacterium”.

Another essayist on computers and human identity is Terry Winograd, once enfant terrible of artificial intelligence, but now with his feet planted firmly on the floor. His essay touches on the vexed issue of the boundaries of computer science. Today there are terrific tensions and frustrations in computing research because a researcher on interface design probably has more in common with social psychologists on the other side of the campus than with the computer theoreticians in the same building. Winograd supposes that there may eventually be a split between interface designers and computer scientists, rather like the complementary roles of architect and civil engineer.

The final set of essays deals with economic and business issues. I think everyone will take away from this book a particular vision that captures their imagination above the others. For me it was an essay on “Information Warfare” by Larry Druffel, former director of the Software Engineering Institute. We have all picked up the idea, from the popular science press or voices in the air, that a new form of warfare is on the horizon. In this new blitzkrieg, taking out the enemy's information systems has the potential to do vastly more damage than the physical destruction caused by Second World War bombers. What would these weapons look like? One example Druffel cites is that of a ‘rogue’ program that floods the networks with bogus messages, impeding the free flow of information. The more advanced the economy, the greater the potential for devastation. Take out Albania's information systems and it probably wouldn't notice for three weeks. But do the same for the United States, 20 years down the road when it is totally dependent on the Internet, and the consequences would be awesome.

On a more upbeat note comes the delightful essay “There and Not There” by William Mitchell, the architect and cultural critic from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Oliver Strimple, director of the Computer Museum in Boston. They ask why would anyone ever go out when everything they might want to see is on-line? In this articulate and optimistic essay, the authors persuasively argue that telepresence is no substitute for ‘being there’. Television or a Web-browser simply cannot capture the full experience of going to a live pop concert, theatre performance, art gallery or soccer match. That indefinable, emotional something one gets at the real event they call ‘aura’. We all knew it in our hearts, but they have given us a word for it.