David Gelernter’s work with Nick Carriero in the 1980s showed how to build the software basis for the flexible, expandable, superfast web search engine, and anticipated the cloud. “Mirror Worlds,” published in 1991, has been regarded as “one of the most influential books in computer science” (Technology Review, July 2007), as it ”foresaw” the World Wide Web (Reuters, March 20, 2001, and others).
“Mirror Worlds” and David’s earlier work directly influenced Sun Microsystems’ development of the Internet programming language Java. His work with Eric Freeman on the Lifestreams system in the 1990s led to the first blog on the Internet (which ran on Lifestreams at Yale) and anticipated today’s stream-based tools at the major social-networking sites and many other ongoing works. His new book “Res Cogitans (The Dark Side of the Mind)” will be published by Norton next year. David is a professor of computer science at Yale and chief scientist at Lifestreams Inc.
His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Tikvah Foundation and the Yeshiva University Museum, where he had a one-man show last fall.
The Creativity Code: Boon or Bane of Digital Society
Collaboration has never been easier. More people than ever can express their creativity and share the result, be it a product, information, or art. Will a new tech-tool-powered Renaissance drive innovation and benefit us all, or is digital collaboration a real threat to true inspiration that just drags us all closer to the mean? Where does co-creation work best? And from what should we protect it? Jordan Brandt of Autodesk, Yale's David Gelernter, Reid Genauer of Magisto, SoundCloud's Alex Ljung, John Maeda of the Rhode Island School of Design, and moderator Doreen Lorenzo of Quirky discuss. Watch video and read the complete transcript here.
Conferences
Techonomy 13
A new society is coming into being. People around the world are building it using the rapidly-evolving tools of technology.
