Mar 18: David Clark at Swarthmore

Computer Science as Social Science: The future of the Internet

David Clark, EECS, MIT

Thursday, March 18
4:15pm in SCI 101
Swarthmore College | Map and Directions

Abstract
A lesson I have learned in my 35 years of working on the Internet is that the technologists are not in charge, and have not been in charge for at least the last 15 or 20 of those years. The forces that will shape the future of the Internet primarily derive from the deep social, economic and cultural embedding of the Internet. Technology will be successful if it is responsive to these pressures. This fact is both exciting and perhaps alarming--it is exciting to be working on a system that has had so much impact on the world, but Computer Scientists are not normally trained to think about these issues, and to derive from these issues what technical problems we should address. I will give some examples, both past and future, that suggest methods and models we can use to link what we as technologists do to the forces in the larger world that will interact with that technology.

Bio
David Clark is a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he has worked since receiving his Ph.D. there in 1973. Since the mid 70s, Dr. Clark has been leading the development of the Internet; from 1981-1989 he acted as Chief Protocol Architect in this development, and chaired the Internet Activities Board. His current research looks at re-definition of the architectural underpinnings of the Internet, and the relation of technology and architecture to economic, societal and policy considerations. He is helping the U.S. National Science foundation organize their Future Internet Design program. Dr. Clark is past chairman of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies, and has contributed to a number of studies on the societal and policy impact of computer communications. He is co-director of the MIT Communications Futures Program, a project for industry collaboration and coordination along the communications value chain.