A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

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

Volunteer Action Centrehttp://www.volunteerkw.ca

Performance Indicators Monitoring System

WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

Thank You

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