[BBLISA-announce] Gordon Bell at MIT, May 6th

[Adam S. Moskowitz]

[This presentation is open to the public]


Computer Society, Social Implications of Technology Society and Greater
Boston Chapter of the ACM

7:00 pm, Thursday, May 6, 2004

Storing Everything Personal

Gordon Bell


Within five years, our personal computers will be able to store everything
we read, write, and hear, and many of the images we see including many
of our personal videos. Vannevar Bush outlined such a system in his 1945
Memex article. For the last four years we have worked on MyLifeBits.
www.MyLifeBits.com holds personal articles, books, email and written
correspondence, photos, video files, web pages visited, and records of
telephone calls. The experience and challenges for making such an everyday,
useful appliance will be described.

Gordon Bell is currently a senior researcher in Microsoft's Media
Presence Research Group - a part of the Bay Area Research Center (BARC).
Beginning in 1995 when he joined Microsoft, Gordon had started to focus
on the use of computers and the necessity of Telepresence: being there
without really being there, then. "There" can be a different place, right
now, or a compressed and different time (a presentation or recording of an
earlier event). In 1999 this project was extended to include multimedia in
the home. He is putting all of his atom- and electron-based bits in his local
Cyberspace. It is called MyLifeBits, the successor to the Cyber All project.
This includes everything he has accumulated, written, photographed, presented,
owns (e.g. CDs), and is acquiring via telephone, meeting capture, etc.

Previously, Gordon Bell spent 23 years (1960-1983) at Digital Equipment
Corporation as Vice President of Research and Development, where he was the
architect of numerous mini- and time-sharing computers, led the development
of the VAX, and pioneered several multiprocessor designs.

He has an SB and SM degree from MIT (1956-57) and honorary D. Eng. from
WPI (1993). During 1966-72 he was Professor of Computer Science and
Electrical Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University. In 1986-1987 he was
the first Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation's Computing
Directorate. He led the National Research and Education Network (NREN) panel
that became the NII/GII, and was an author of the first High Performance
Computer and Communications Initiative. Beginning in 1987 he sponsored
"The Gordon Bell Prize" for Parallelism, awarded at the annual ACM/IEEE
Conference on Supercomputing.

Bell has authored numerous books and papers including "High Tech Ventures:
The Guide to Entrepreneurial Success", which describes the Bell-Mason
Diagnostic for analyzing new ventures and Computer Structures (with Allen
Newell and Dan Siewiorek).

He is a founding board member and fellow of The Computer History Museum and
is on the advisory boards of Cradle Technology, Diamond Cluster Exchange,
Dust Inc. and The Vanguard Group. He is also a founder and director of
the Bell-Mason Group, supplying expert systems for venture development to
startups, investors, governments, and entrepreneurial ventures.

Bell is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Fellow),
American Association for the Advancement of Science (Fellow), ACM (Fellow),
IEEE (Fellow and Computer Pioneer), and the National Academy of Engineering.
His awards include: the IEEE Von Neumann Medal, the AEA Inventor Award for
the greatest economic contribution to the New England region, the IEEE 2001
Vladamir Karapetoff Eminent Member's Award of Eta Kappa Nu, and the 1991
National Medal of Technology.

This meeting is jointly sponsored by the Boston Chapters of the IEEE
Computer Society and the IEEE Social Implications of Technology Society and
the Greater Boston Chapter of the ACM (GBC/ACM) and is free and open to the
public. No pre-registration is required. The meeting starts at 7:00 PM and
is located at MIT building 10, room 250 at 77 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA.
For more information, please contact Archie Blondin (CS) at 781-551-8205
or adblondin at aol.com or Alex Brown (SIT) at 617-308-9456 or a.brown at ieee.org

Directions to MIT, building 10, room 250: MIT is located at 77 Massachusetts
Avenue, just on the north side of Memorial Drive in Cambridge, MA. Enter
through the main entrance and walk through the main corridor until you
reach building 10. The room is on the second floor. For map of the area,
use the URL http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?locate=3Dbldg_10.