Heidelberg Laureate Forum Blog

Butler Lampson, in his lecture Hints and Principles for Computer System Design [1], has the following anecdote: I remember hearing from the chief program officer for the software of the new joint fighter the F-35, in the US, five or so years ago. He said "I'm the chief software program officer, and I'm absolutely certain that the approved requirements for the software for this plane cannot be met, and there's nothing I can do about it because there are so many forces being brought to bear on these requirements." (45:45 - 46:18) [1] https://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/video/lecture-hints-and-prin… (27 August 2015)

Here's a video of an excellent presentation Lamport gave on "21st-century proofs" last year: https://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/blog/video/lecture-tuesday-s…

I saw him speak on "A Personal History of Computers" last year and wrote about it here: http://chrissvec.com/fred-brooks-talk-a-personal-history-of-computers/ Brooks's overview: "I fell in love with computers at age 13, in 1944 when Aiken (architect) and IBM (engineers) unveiled the Harvard Mark I, the first American automatic computer. A half-generation behind the pioneers, I have known many of them. So this abbreviated history is personal in two senses: it is primarily about the people rather than the technology, and it disproportionally emphasizes the parts I know personally." It was a great talk covering his whole career. A video of the same talk is here: http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/blog/video/lecture-tuesday-au…

I really wanted to watch this, but the video is unwatchable, it keeps buffering every few seconds, and the slides aren't showing at all. Many thanks to pron for linking the paper. Message to http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/ and all others who persist in using video players that don't work: maybe try youtube?

This is fascinating to me. A couple comments and links. Here is a course on proof theory that uses Coq [1]. It is actually the course that Vladimir Voevodsky took when he was trying to understand proof and type theory [2], [3]. While writing the midterm paper, he discovered homotopy type theory [4]. More details on the bitcoin scripting language can be found in the excellent blog post by Michael Nielsen[5]. If the escrow model is implemented, you can actually imagine the mathematical proof market maker acting like a bank, loaning out or otherwise investing bitcoins while the world waits for a verified proof; say, of the abc conjecture [6a] or the goldbach conjecture [6b]. This might be one small way to disrupt Wall St [7a], [7b]. In particular, such a market, when more highly developed, provides skilled mathematicians and scientists incentives to work on math and ( computer ) science problems in an open source format that benefits everyone - since everyone can look at and learn from their proofs - rather than quantitative trading in a closed format that actually causes long term social harm and political instability [IMHO]. I am thinking here of Goldman Sachs and Renaissance Technology founded by James Simons. Imagine if an incentive structure existed that encouraged all these smart folks to work on what is essentially verifiable open source software [8]. [1] http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall09/cos441/index.php [2]…

search/google "steps alan kay" or watch https://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/video/lecture-putting-turing…

Notation has steadily advanced towards the more precise and concise, because it helps. Watch this interesting Lamport talk about the changes in notation: http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/blog/video/lecture-tuesday-se…

Check out this Scientific American article[1], especially the video of a presentation given by Voevodsky. Edit: Here's a more direct page[2] if you just want the video. [1] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/voevodskye28099s-mathem… [2] http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/blog/video/lecture-thursday-s…

Turing award winner John Hopcroft[1] has a similar message about the future of computer science research[1]. He talks about how a lot of early CS research was to make Computer Science useful by focusing on languages and algorithms but how the focus is and will be changing. Pretty cool topics like sparse vectors, zero-knowledge proofs and social networks with applications in biology and digital medical records. [1]http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/blog/video/lecture-friday-sep…

Here's a talk he gave on this topic, from 2013: http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/blog/video/lecture-friday-sep…