2010计算思维读书笔记.ppt

* * * * Now that I have given you a taste of two essential ingredients to computing, abstraction and automation, let me pop up a level and discuss what I call the three drivers to computing: society, technology, and science. As with all sciences and engineering, as shown by the bidirectional arrows in this figure, there is wonderful interplay—push and pull—among these three drivers: In the usual loop, scientific discovery feeds technological innovation which feeds new societal applications; in the reverse direction, societal problems, e.g., global warming, may demand new technology or demand new scientific discovery. In computing, here is an example of how society demands new science: the spread of our own computing and communications machinery, from mega-data centers of tens of thousands of servers to billions of cell phones are requiring new advances in science to use energy more efficiently. Here is an example of how society demands new technology: the desire for higher fidelity and more realistic virtual environments is straining our network capability for real-time simultaneous transmission of multiple multi-media data streams—audio, video, and text. Another example of technology pull is how a fundamental social desire to express one’s identity and connect with likeminded others led to the unanticipated and rapid rise of social networks, such as FaceBook, MySpace, and YouTube, which in just the past four years added a new industry to our economy. Let me elaborate a little on these drivers, starting with some obvious technology trends. * * In terms of computing substrates: Moore’s Law says that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years. Last September, Gordon Moore said himself that Moore’s Law will end in 10-15 years. Nano is coming. In March 2006, IBM?researchers built the first complete integrated circuit?around a single carbon nanotube molecule. Bio is coming. In 1994, Len Adleman solved the 7-point Hamiltonian path problem with