Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing [Hardcover]

Peter J. Denning (Author), Robert M. Metcalfe (Author), J. Burke (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 20, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0387949321 | ISBN-13: 978-0387949321 | Edition: 1

In March 1997, the Association for Computing Machinery will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the electronic computer. To understand what an extraordinary fifty years the computer has had, you need only look around you--probably no farther than your desk. Computers are everywhere: in our cars, our homes, our supermarkets, at the phone company office, and at your local hospital. But as the contributors to this volume make clear, the scientific, social and economic impact of computers is only beginning to be felt. These sixteen invited essays on the future of computing take on a dazzling variety of topics, with opinions from such experts as Gordon Bell, Sherry Turkle, Edsger W. Dijkstra, Paul Abraham, Donald Norman, Franz Alt, and David Gelernter. This brilliantly eclectic collection, commissioned to celebrate a major milestone in an ongoing technological revolution, will fascinate anybody with an interest in computers and where they're taking us.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

A prodigious effort encompassing 20 lengthy essays, this work attempts to illuminate the future by asking computer professionals and academics how computing and computers will change over the next 50 years. The varied responses come under such titles as "Growing Up in the Culture of Simulation" and "Why It's Good That Computers Don't Work Like the Brain." A typical passage reads: "[The Internet] has grown from an idea motivated by the need to interconnect heterogeneous packet-communication networks to our present-day ubiquitous communication web joining people, businesses, [and] institutions, through various forms of electronic equipment in a common framework." The essays are of course speculative, almost in a free-for-all way, and the conclusions, once unearthed from layers of scholarly expatiation, are something less than astonishing. Marginally recommended for academic libraries.?Robert C. Ballou, Atlanta
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

...a compelling book...what sets the book apart from the general run of technology-future books is the authority of its contributors and the tone of restraint that pervades it, when compared with the genre's usual ludicrous extrapolations. -- Nature, November 6, 1997

Beyond Calculation was produced at the behest of the Association for Computing Machinery, the largest international scientific and educational computer society in the world. Founded in 1947, a year after the first successful electronic digital computer (ENIAC) was unveiled, ACM knows enough about computing's past to make credible speculations about its future. For this book, ACM (www.acm.org) asked two dozen of its top talents, the cream of computer science, to speculate on what's around the next 50 years of the exponential curve. In general, Beyond Calculation provides a sober assessment of three aspects of computing: the purely technical (still taking off), the social and cultural (dawning in our consciousness) and the commercial (which has reached out to embrace the academic). The editors, ACM Publications Co-Chairmen Peter Denning and Ethernet inventor and InfoWorld columnist Bob Metcalfe, elicited some diverse and thoughtful essays. Not all of them hit the mark, and a few are self-serving, but taken together they represent an imaginative attempt to show where computer science is heading. -- Upside, Cliff Barney

Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing...offers a collection of 24 essays of astonishing intellectual reach. -- Stephen Manes, The New York Times March 11, 1997

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 313 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (February 20, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0387949321
• ISBN-13: 978-0387949321
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,771,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Living Beyond..., February 29, 2000

By 

LeeAnn Stone (Pepperdine University) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing (Paperback)

Beyond Calculation is a collection of 20 essays by some of the cream of computing's top echelon. For the most part, these are not futuristic scenarios- the authors present fairly conservative observations regarding the future of computing. This circumspection is no accident - most of the authors have lived and worked through the full range of computing's evolutionary development and they are quite aware of the disjunction between earlier futuristic predictions and today's realities. On the other hand, they are also cognizant of the grand surprises in innovation and culture that have taken computing in directions that futurists of yore never foresaw. On another level, Beyond Calculation provides a fascinating view into a particular community of practice. For as one reads the individual essays, one encounters similarities in references that undoubtedly arise from the fact that many of these essayists have collaborated in a variety of ways over (in some cases) several decades. Many (all?) are associated with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) which published the compendium. What is a common conclusion drawn among these essayists? The message is clear- that this is an environment in which surprises have been and will continue to be the norm (Frankston, 56), and that "we should expect that our understanding is incomplete and wrong so that we can adapt to surprises" (55). The surprises in innovation and the social implications of these innovations preclude us from envisioning at this point whatever the full future of computing will bring. Winograd summarizes best this consensus when he writes:

Imagine that on the 50th anniversary of the "Association for Automotive Machinery" a group of experts had been asked to speculate on the "next fifty years of driving". They might well have envisioned new kinds of engines, automatic braking, and active suspension systems. But what about interstate freeways, drive-in movies, and the decline of the inner city? These are not exactly changes in "driving" but in the end they are the most significant consequence of automotive technology (159-160).

Perhaps, then, only through hindsight we will be able to identify `the most significant consequences of computing technology."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The next 50 years look bright, February 13, 2000

By 

Ted Phillips - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing (Paperback)

A compilation of 20 essays which speculate about the impacts of future technological advances on society. Divided into sections, the essays address three themes: The Coming Revolution (speculation about hardware, software and networks); Computers and Human Identity (the impact cheap computing may have in regard to the way people live and work); and Business and Innovation (the impact technology will have on business practices and on the process of innovation). The individual authors whose essays were included in the book are all members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The authors responded to a call, in 1997, for papers which would attempt to look 50 years into the future to, "...examine the current realities of how people are using computers and what they [authors] are concerned about, and then project the consequences over the next few decades." (xv)

A 'futures' book, Beyond Calculation offers a positive look at how technology might interact with us in the not-so-distant future. The most impressive quality of the book is the grounded-ness of the essays. As readers, we are not presented with a mountain of pie-in-the-sky predictions that have no basis in reality, or Star Wars-like oohs and ahs. To the contrary, anyone with any knowledge of technology will see that these are serious essays, by qualified technologists taking care to work within a framework of common sense. The futures they paint seem plausible, yet are still surprising. I found myself saying, "of course" many times as I read through the scenarios.

The book itself should be of great interest to anyone who is struggling to get a view of how technology will impact us in the future. Thankfully, these authors, save one, believe that if we can keep our perspective on the idea of technology serving and expanding us, the rush rush of today's hyperculture can subside. Educators, business people and those with an interest in learning what technology can (and might) do should definitely open and read this book. It is a hopeful look at a future too many are willing to paint in gray.

3.0 out of 5 stars An interesting, but not very exciting read., December 23, 1999

By 

D. Ortman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing (Paperback)

This books serves as a collection of essays from various experts in the field of computing. These essays speculate on the future of computing over the next fifty years. While the material was quite interesting; most of the essays were quite dry. A couple of the essays seemed like a chore to read.