Prakash’s Blogs

I was going through an article by Jim Gray (1998 Turing Award Winner) and the wonderful contribution he has made to the information technology. As a result of his research, databases have evolved from 10 megabyte-sized storage facilities, which were the sole property of large corporations, into terabyte-sized computers available to millions of people.

It was all unrelenting effort and perseverance in every task these genius minds undertook that not only made our lives comfortable but also gave rise to what we call an “IT Industry”. Let me highlight towards the great work they did in the field of computing. Here are few notable ones and their ideologies.

Charles Babbage’s idea: computational goal was to include highly-secure, highly-available, self-programming, self-managing and self-replicating systems. As of now, the Charles Babbage’s vision of computing has largely been realized.

Vannevar Bush’s Memex dream: to include a system that automatically organizes, indexes, digests, evaluates and summarizes information (as well as a human might). We are at present on the verge of realizing Vannevar Bush’s Memex.

Alan Turing’s vision: of intelligent machines to include prosthetic vision, speech, hearing and other senses. But there is still a long way before a system passes the Turing Test.

Who will make the difference and bring another revolution that Einstein brought a century back (1905) with the introduction of three papers and changed the way world used to perceive the universe as we perceive it now?

Is it the DNA Computing, Quantum Computing or some unpublished work in research centers across the world?