A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

1. A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

2. 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

3. The Past - 40 years ago • 1967/68 – IBM 360/75 • The “Red Room” (in MC) • Housed Canada’s largest computer WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

4. The Past - 40 years ago • 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 bigger • Solid state electronics around about 7 years in 67 • Early machines - IBM 1620/7090 • Transistor - ½ cm in diameter • Today CPUs + memory like a speck of dust (mote) • Before 1960 - vacuum tubes (light bulbs with a personality) WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

5. The Past – some comparisons • 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 WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

6. The Past – some comparisons • 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 WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

7. The Past – some comparisons • 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 WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

8. 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

9. We’ve come a long way • 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 WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

10. But have we? • 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 WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

11. A comparison • 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? WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

12. The consequences • 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? WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

13. What might be done? • 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 WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

14. What might be done? • 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 WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

15. What might be done? • 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 WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

16. What might be done? • 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 WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

17. What have we done? • 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 WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

18. com Stewardship Tracking System http://comap.ca/sts Contact dwm@csg.uwaterloo.ca for a userid and password.

19. WEB Site Facebook / Blog Public Information Search Engine Document Repository Document Sharing Information Retrieval Similarities of Other Approaches versus STS Mapping Activity Records Network of Friends Role-based Security

20. Project NOW (Newcomers Online Waterloo) http://www.newcomerswaterloo.ca

21. Volunteer Action Centre http://www.volunteerkw.ca

22. Performance Indicators Monitoring System

23. Thank You Comments!! Questions?? WatITis | Life After 50 | December 4, 2007 | A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future