CS SEMINAR

The technical and policy future of the Internet - a heavily inter-related set of issues

Speaker
Prof David Farber
Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and
Public Policy in the School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University

Chaired by
Dr Richard MA Tianbai, Associate Professor, School of Computing
tbma@comp.nus.edu.sg

11 Feb 2015 Wednesday, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Executive Classroom, COM2-04-02

Abstract:

Prof. Farber will cover two different but coupled areas in his talk. The first is his projection, based on his experience, on the evolution of computer and network architecture. We are just at the beginning of a major change in our field - what this is and what the implications on our field, both in research and in business will be discussed.

As the impact of the Internet impacts the everyday life of the worlds citizens the subject of Internet Governance has become a hot topic both in Internet and broader policy circles. What do we mean by "Internet Governance," especially in light of the the global and decentralized nature of the Internet itself? What are some of the organizations and processes that shape the principles, norms, and rules, of the Internet from a policy and technical perspective? What roles to national governments and international bodies play in the system and on what issues are in the forefront of the global conversation about the evolution of the space?


Biodata:

David Farber was, prior to his retirement, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University holding secondary appointments in the Heinz College and the Engineering Public Policy Group. He is now an Adjunct Professor of Internet Studies in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon as well as Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the University of Delaware.

In 2003, he retired as the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor Emeritus of Telecommunication Systems at the University of Pennsylvania where he held appointments as Professor of Business and Public Policy at the Wharton School of Business and as a Faculty Associate of the Annenberg School of Communications.

In 2000, he was appointed to be Chief Technologist at the US Federal Communications Commission while on leave from UPenn for one year ending in early June 2001. While at UPenn, he co-directed The Penn Initiative on Markets, Technology and Policy. He was also Director of the Distributed Systems Laboratory - DSL where he managed leading edge research in Ultra High Speed Networking. Research papers of the DSL are available in its electronic library. His early academic research work was focused at creating the worlds first operational Distributed Computer System -- DCS while at the ICS Department at the University of California at Irvine. After that, while with the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Delaware, he helped conceive and organize CSNet, NSFNet and the NREN.

He graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1956 and then started an eleven-year career at Bell Laboratories where he helped design the first electronic switching system - the ESS as well as co-designer of the programming language SNOBOL. He then went west to the Rand Corporation and to Scientific Data Systems prior to joining academia. Prior to his appointment to the FCC, he served on the US Presidential Advisory Board on Information Technology. He is a Visiting Professor of the Center for Global Communications of Japan -- Glocom of the International University of Japan, a Member of the Advisory Board at the National Institute of Informatics of Japan and a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and the Stevens Institute of Technology and the Internet Society.

He is a Fellow of both the ACM and the IEEE and was the recipient of the 1995 ACM Sigcomm Award for life long contributions to the computer communications field. He was awarded in 1997 the prestigious John Scott Award for Contributions to Humanity. In 1999, he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology and in 2013 was awarded the Stevens Honor Award for outstanding contributions to his field.