Dr. Sun Microsystems gave a talk titled "Finishing the Revolution" on February 20^th, 2003.

Abstract:

When you're in the middle of a revolution, it can be difficult to divine the foundational forces and principles at work amid the chaos. But with typical MIT hubris, that is exactly what this talk will attempt to do with the ongoing revolution in internetworking. With the potential to transform culture and society, this revolution derives its structure from three interwoven threads. The first is the law (formulated by Gingell) that networks continuously morph logical structure through a process of decomposition, distribution, specialization and re-integration. The second is a basic observation that all consumer-facing technologies become fashion. And the third is a qualitative extrapolation of the physics of computation (Feynman, Landauer, Wheeler) to a world where atoms and bits become more intricated over time, leading to the concepts of "infra-destructuring" and "bitmass." Can these threads really have anything to do with one another? If you're willing to suspend disbelief, this talk will show how they come together and what challenges they pose. Hey, in any case, it'll a lot more fun (for me) than talking about whether Linux on 2.5GHz Pentium IVs solves all of the world's known computing problems.

Biography:

Greg Papadopoulos is responsible for managing technology, standards, computing architectures, and associated advanced development programs at Sun.

In addition, Papadopoulos currently serves on the boards of the SETI Institute (http://www.seti-inst.edu) and the Institute for Women and Technology (http://www.iwt.org).

Since joining Sun in 1994, he has held several strategic positions, including vice president of technology and advanced development for Sun's systems business, chief scientist for server engineering, and chief scientist for enterprise servers and storage.

Before joining Sun, Papadopoulos was senior architect and director of product strategy for Thinking Machines. He was also an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, where he conducted research in scalable systems, multithreaded/dataflow processor architecture, functional and declarative languages, and fault-tolerant computing. Papadopoulos was also a development engineer at Hewlett-Packard and Honeywell and co-founded three companies: PictureTel (video conferencing), Ergo (high-end PCs), and Exa Corporation (computational fluid dynamics).

He holds a bachelor's degree in systems science from the University of California at San Diego, as well as a master's and a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT.

For more information:

• CSAIL Dertouzos Lecturer Series