Today is Ada Lovelace Day! In her honor, writers around the world have pledged to publish a note about a woman in technology who they admire. See FindingAda.com for more info. It is impossible for me to only pick one woman in technology! For me, there are so many to choose from, including:
But, instead of picking just one woman, I'm going to cop-out and vote for the entire Next Generation of women who will change the face of computing, and take the field in exciting new directions. This includes:
To all of the women in the Next Generation, we salute you!
We just returned from ACM SIGCSE-2008 which was held in rainy and gloomy Portland, OR. Nice city though, despite the weather and most of us from IPRE were just too busy fielding interest from the 1400+ attendees.
IPRE had a booth in the Exibhition Hall which was continuously staffed by the bulk of the IPRE team. The conference also coincided with the official launch of the first IPRE Kit and also an announcement regarding two summer workshops we will be hosting. Needless to say, we were thrilled to have received numerous orders within 24 hours of the launch. It kind of generated the euphoria that many dot-commers experience when a site goes online.
iQue robot by Toy Quest (image from http://www.toyquest.com/ique/index.html)
Its manufacturers, Toy Quest, call it the “world’s smartest robot”. Indeed, the speaking iQue robot on wheels has a superb memory and fact recall. Specifically, iQue knows the entire Meriam-Webster student edition dictionary, thousands of historical and other facts, and can even learn and remember information about its beloved owner. But does that really make iQue smart?
IQue’s marketers claim that it will become “your new best friend”, which seems a far reach. It’s entertaining that it can speak to you, ask you questions, and remember facts about you. Yet you cannot exactly have any real type of communication with the iQue – you must type all responses to its questions in a remote control keypad, and you cannot ask it questions about itself. I find Pleo, which cannot form human words, a better companion since it can interact with you. You can watch it develop as a live being would. It reacts when you play tug-of-war with it over its plastic “leaf”, tugging playfully at the leaf and panting, and it yelps angrily when you hold it up by its tail. In short, it can communicate non-verbally with you in a much more natural way than the iQue can.
She’s green and tan, with big curious blue eyes and scaly skin. She’s about as large as a little cat. And as we speak, she’s munching vigorously on her green and yellow plant leaf under my desk. Presently, she’s done eating and she’s staring across the room and up at the ‘ceiling’ (the underside of my desk), yelping and – even walking! One rubbery hoofed paw after the other.
Imagine this:
You get ready to go to work in the morning, go into your garage, open the door, pick up the newspaper from the driveway, get in the car, and say:
"Take me to work."
The car backs out of your driveway, on the road and heads toward work. You're sitting in the back seat (no driver in front!) reading the paper.
On the STOP sign near your block, you say:
"Stop by the Starbucks on the way"
The car goes into a Starbucks, you go in, get your favorite latte, hop back in, and off you go!
Couple weeks back I went over to U-Penn to watch the DARPA Urban Challenge Race being live webcast from Victorville, CA. There were about 60-70 people in the room (we had to move to a bigger room!) watching the events unfold. Lots of loud cheering each time Penn's entry (Little Ben) was shown on the screen. 5-10 minutes into the race, Little Ben ran into a snag: it just came to a halt trying to take a left turn onto a major road. DARPA had to stop all the other cars for 5-10 minutes. The commentators wondered out loud if that was the end of Little Ben. Half the people in the room walked out dejected.
In a recent article in GOOD magazine, Chris Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "cheek-sent-me-hi") noted:
Among the many changes in U.S. policy after 9/11 was one that went unnoticed by everyone except a few geeks: The military quietly reversed its longstanding position on the role of robots in battlefields, and now embraces the idea of autonomous killing machines. There was no outcry from the academics who study robotics—indeed, with few exceptions they lined up to help, developing new technologies for intelligent navigation, locomotion, and coordination. At my own institute, an enormous space is being out-fitted to coordinate robotic flying, swimming, and marching units in preparation for some future Normandy.
Two computer scientists have found an interesting difference between how men and women use software. From an MSNBC report:
Laura Beckwith, a new computer science Ph.D. from Oregon State University, and her adviser, Margaret Burnett, specialize in studying the way people use computers to solve everyday problems — like adding formulas to spreadsheets, animation to Web sites and styles to word processing documents.
A couple of years ago, they stumbled upon an intriguing tidbit: Men, it seemed, were more likely than women to use advanced software features, specifically ones that help users find and fix errors. Programmers call this "debugging," and it's a crucial step in building programs that work.
In the past, the Franklin Institute has invited us here at Bryn Mawr College to participate in demonstrations of our interesting robotics projects. We have always been very happy to take a group of robots on a nice Saturday morning in the Fall and have some fun showing kids of all ages our toys, er, I mean, "research opportunities."
However, this year I am hesitating. This year, the FI is bundling their robot demonstrations with an event called Robot Conflict. They describe it this way:
Bryn Mawr College Department of Philosophy, Department of Computer Science, The Center for Science in Society, and the Delaware Valley Distinguished Lecture Series in Computer Science presents:
William J. Rapaport
University at Buffalo
Title: Philosophy of Computer Science
William J. Rapaport is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, an affiliated faculty member in the Departments of Philosophy and of Linguistics, and a member of the Center for Cognitive Science, all at State University of New York at Buffalo. His research interests are in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, knowledge representation and reasoning, contextual vocabulary acquisition, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, critical thinking, and cognitive development. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The IPRE team was both thrilled and honored to be awarded last month (July) the “Technical Innovation Award for Educational Impact” at the AAAI-07 Sixteenth Annual AAAI Mobile Robot Competition in Vancouver BC, Canada.
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