Technical Coordination, Concepts of Governance and the need to support a rapidly globalising Internet

Abstract
The Internet and its supported economic and social interests have grown in geometric proportions over the last 15 years. At the core of this growth has been the innovation and coordination among many technical and private players.
The expansion of the network has been a product of a balance of inputs and interests among technical, academic, business,  civil society and governments.  As the Internet becomes more pervasive, supporting economic and social interaction, its relationship with pre-existing concepts of governance and social norm-setting has become topical. The important distinction between technical coordination and the governance of human interactions and socio-economic outcomes is essential.

Public Policy for Internet Governance

Abstract
The management of the Internet naming and addressing system has been assigned to a public-private partnership in the context of the ICANN organisation and the GAC. Although this system is still experimental, it has been much improved during the past two years. Problems have been identified and are being addressed; they would be present under any alternative arrangement. Effective global participation is key in this respect; both public and private. Public participation must include the full range of languages, levels of development and geographical regions. Private participation is not limited to operators. Users and civil society must also play their roles.
In future, ICANN and the governments will have to address more in-depth issues within the ICANN mandate such as IDN and IPv6. Governments will also have to address issues that are currently outside the ICANN mandate. This may give rise to different international systems, or to other solutions.
Meanwhile, work must go on. The Internet does not stop for international consultation. A global public-private partnership such as ICANN-GAC requires a lot of hard work. Both private operators and public officials have to put in time and energy to achieve results. At its best, this can be more efficient than formal inter-governmental procedures. But it is not cost-less. A significant flow of public and private resources is necessary, on a permanent basis.

Innovation and Information Processing

Abstract
Technical progress in Information Processing has been extraordinary over the last 40 years. In this presentation we will briefly review some of the most significant improvements in both hardware and software, from micro-electronics to storage, from algorithms to databases. While scientific progress has been key to this progress, the next wave of innovation will come from two different directions.
First, a number of application domains are going to drive further innovation at a fast pace. The development of MEMS technology will enable inexpensive and miniature sensors and actuators of all types. These will create innovation opportunities in major industries, including bioengineering, health, device service, as well as in the home. To realize these opportunities we will face system and software challenges. Since most of our systems design knowledge has its roots in the mechanical systems world, the applications and evolution of MEMS technologies will force us to rethink systems design and new digital paradigms will take hold. The development of new web services standards is also making great headway. This will be further accelerated by the better integration of information streams, including structured and unstructured information. This integration is key to full automation of business processes. The enablers for this transformation are not only the web service standards, including XML, but also the natural language processing technologies that have become significantly mature. The presentation will review examples of these capabilities. There is no doubt that intelligent systems still need development to reach the next level of automation.
It is worth noting that a great deal of IT progress has been due to the creation of new knowledge in other sciences, like physics and chemistry, which drove advances in microelectronics, storage and communications. Therefore, the second driver for the next wave of innovation in IT will in fact also rely on scientific progress in other disciplines. In addition to continual improvements in the silicon based technology, today we are seeing the emergence of new semiconductor materials and processing methods based on organic and polymer technologies. These technologies will shape the future of display technologies, and also MEMS, thereby closing the loop to where we started from. A number of recent inventions will be described and ideas of innovative applications will be given.

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The Role of Empirical
Study in Software
Engineering

Abstract
Although most scientific and engineering disciplines view empiricism as a basic aspect of their discipline, that view has not been the tradition in software engineering. There is not the same symbiotic relationship between theory and empirical study, each feeding the other for the evolution of the discipline. This talk discusses of the role of empirical study plays in the understanding and improvement of the software product and process. It offers an historical perspective of the evolution of empirical methods and their application over time and provides a wide ranging set of example application of empirical methods to demonstrate various kinds of roles that empiricism can play. The examples are taken
from the author's own experience and include the use of empirical study to improve an organization's product quality and productivity (NASA/Goddard), a series of experiments used to evolve a particular analytic technique (software artifact inspection), and current work on evaluating the effectiveness of various interventions for us in improving mission-critical software, studying the relationship between development and performance of high end computing systems, and the development of an empirically-based repository of software practices.

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Grand Challenges in Computing Research: the Global Ubiquitous Computer

Abstract
The UK Computing research Committee has launched a programme of Grand Challenges, to focus the long-term aspirations of the computing research community (national and international) both in science and in engineering. At present there are seven proposals for such challenges, arising from ideas submitted to a workshop in 2002. For each proposal there is a core group of researchers aiming to form a road-map.
Two of these proposed Challenges involve what may be called the Global Ubiquitous Computer; it subsumes both the Internet and instrumented environments. Its name reflects the reasonable prediction that, within two decades, virtually all computing agents (heart-monitors, satellites, laptops, ...) will be interconnected, forming an organism that is partly artefact and partly natural phenomenon -- in either case one of the most complex ever constructed or studied. What models help us to understand it? What engineering principles can cope with the vast range of magnitudes involved?
My lecture will consider how to begin to address these two Challenges. Very many concepts are involved. They include authenticity, beliefs, connectivity, compilation, continuum, data-protection, delegation, duties, provenance, failure, intentions, locality, model-checking, mobility, obligations, reflectivity, security, simulation, specification, stochastics, trust, and many more.
Models are needed that explain and implement some of these concepts in terms of others. I shall end the lecture by describing some of my own work in modelling connectivity, locality and mobility. These notions arise naturally out of our existing models of concurrent computation, and can help to lay a foundation for global ubiquitous computation.