Distinguished Lecture Series

"On Building Memex: Current Status"Dr. Gordon BellMicrosoft ResearchAbstractMemex is a quest to chronicle a person's life by encoding every aspect of one's communications with people and machines, what is heard and seen, and all the aspects of their physical existence. These digital memories will not only extend human memory; they will infallibly record sensor readings and machine activities not even perceived by humans. Digital memories can provide humans with better recall, improved health, faster learning, new insights, and a telling of their story to posterity that only the great used to receive. They will hopefully enhance personal reflection in the same way that internet search has enabled more research.Biography:Gordon Bell is a senior researcher in Microsoft's Media Presence Research Group - a part of the Bay Area Research Center (BARC) maintaining an interest in startup ventures. Gordon has long evangelized scalable systems starting with his interest in multiprocessors (mP) beginning in 1965 with the design of Digital's PDP-6, PDP-10's antecedent, one of the first mPs and the first timesharing computer. He continues this interest with various talks about trends in future supercomputing (see Papers… presentations, etc.) and especially clustered systems formed from cost-effective "personal computers". As Digital's VP of R&D he was responsible for the VAX Computing Environment. In 1987, he led the cross-agency group as head of NSF's Computing Directorate that made "the plan" for the National Research and Education Network (NREN) aka the Internet. When joining Microsoft in 1995, Gordon had started focusing on the use of computers and the necessity of telepresence: being there without really being there, then. "There" can be a different place, right now, or a compressed and different time (a presentation or recording of an earlier event). In 1999 this project was extended to include multimedia in the home (visit Papers… presentations, etc.). He is putting all of his atom- and electron-based bits in his local Cyberspace. It is called by MyLifeBits the successor to the Cyber All project. This includes everything he has accumulated, written, photographed, presented, and owns (e.g. CDs). In February 2005 an epiphany occurred with the realization that MyLifeBits goes beyond Vannevar Bush's "memex" and is a personal transaction processing database for everything described in June 14, 2005 SIGMOD Keynote.Refreshments will be served.Host: Leana Golubchik

Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien