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MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
EECS Event |
Monday, October 30, 2000
4:00 PM (refreshments 3:45)
Edgerton Hall, Room 34-101
EECS Colloquium
Abstract
The digital revolution has given us a clear distinction between hardware and software, between channels and the content they carry, between physical science and computer science, but it is right at these boundaries between the bits of the digital world and the atoms of our physical world that the most compelling opportunities and problems in information technology lay. I will discuss the science underlying the integration of information with its physical properties over length scales from atomic nuclei to planetary networks, and discuss its implications for the life of people and their machines. Examples will be drawn from projects addressing global development, creative expression, and appropriate interfaces.
Professor Neil Gershenfeld leads the Physics and Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, and directs the Things That Think research consortium. His laboratory investigates the relationship between the content of information and its physical representation, from developing molecular computers (which led to the first experimental demonstration of a quantum computation), to smart furniture (seen in the Museum of Modern Art and used in automobile safety systems), to virtuosic musical instruments (including a cello for Yo-Yo Ma and a stage for the Flying Karamazov Brothers). Author of "When Things Start To Think," "The Nature of Mathematical Modeling," and "The Physics of Information Technology," Dr. Gershenfeld has a B.A. in Physics with High Honors from Swarthmore College, a Ph.D. from Cornell University, was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows, and a member of the research staff at Bell Labs.