Reed's Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed

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The history of computing is one of punctuated equilibria, with each era reshaping and raising our expectations about computing’s power, scope and relevance. From mainframes and minicomputers through workstations and PCs to the web, the exponential changes continue to be deep and profound. Today, the Web 2.0 revolution is in full flight, driven by large-scale (soon heterogeneous) multicore processors (called manycore), scalable cloud computing, social networks (See Socializing in Cyberspace) and software as a service. None of us knows where this future will lead, but the excitement is palpable.

KAUST IT Summit Reflections

I just returned from the KAUST IT Summit, hosted by Saudi Aramco. You will recall from my earlier post that this summit was convened to discuss the computing technology needed to support a new science and technology university, scheduled to open in 2009. (Thanks to Amazon CTO Werner Vogels for the photograph. Incidentally, Amazon was the only place I could find a travel guide to Saudi Arabia.)

KAUST is intended to serve as a catalyst for a knowledge economy in Saudi Arabia, with a $10B operating endowment and a new campus being built on the Red Sea. King Abdullah has charged Saudi Aramco with the design and initiation of the campus, its faculty and its students. The trip was a fascinating experience, for many reasons, personal, cultural and academic.