Advances driven by the future of computing

UW CS Professor extraordinaire Ed Lazowska gave a talk recently, "Computer Science: Past, Present and Future", that covered some of the large new opportunities will be created from advances in computing in the next ten years.

What I found most insightful in the talk was Ed's discussion of how many fields will be going to go from data poor to data rich, a process driven by cheaper sensors and the availability of massive parallel computing power to analyze, summarize, and understand the incoming flood of sensor data. He specifically held up oceanography, medicine, astronomy, and biology as fields that will be forever changed by this shift.

If you are short on time, the slides (PDF) are available from a similar talk Ed gave at FCRC 2007. Slide 37 summarizes the major opportunities and some details on those opportunities start on slide 46.

Update: Oops, sorry, the video from Ed's talk is not available yet. It should be available in just a few days.

Update: The video from the talk is now available.