Butler Lampson is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft Corporation and an Adjunct Professor at MIT. He has worked on computer architecture, local area networks, raster printers, page description languages, operating systems, remote procedure call, programming languages and their semantics, programming in the large, fault-tolerant computing, transaction processing, computer security, WYSIWYG editors, and tablet computers.

He was one of the designers of the SDS 940 time-sharing system, the Alto personal distributed computing system, the Xerox 9700 laser printer, two-phase commit protocols, the Autonet LAN, the SPKI system for network security, the Microsoft Tablet PC software, the Microsoft Palladium high-assurance stack, and several programming languages. He received the ACM Software Systems Award in 1984 for his work on the Alto, the IEEE Computer Pioneer award in 1996 and von Neumann Medal in 2001, the Turing Award in 1992, and the NAE's Draper Prize in 2004.

Abstract:

"Information and innovation :The Uses of Computers: The Best is Yet to Come."

People have been inventing new ideas in computer systems for nearly five decades, usually driven by Moore's Law. Many of them have been spectacularly successful: networks and the web, relational databases, and graphical user interfaces are just a few examples. But great opportunities also lie before us: highly dependable and highly adaptable systems, and embodied machines that integrate with the physical world, such as cars that drive themselves or sensor networks that monitor the health of our environment and the safety of our streets. Broadly viewed, computers can be used for simulation, for communication, and for embodiment. The last is the newest and the most exciting.

"Global challenges on scientific innovations -- Computing, Queen and Servant of Science and Society"

Information technology is the most important force today in the development of the world's economy, and it is also having a large and increasing impact on daily life. Many years of experience teach us some lessons about how to get the most out of IT:

--Big successes (personal computers, the Internet, the Web, search) take time (15 years is quick), and don't go according to plan.

--Both basic science and engineering are important for the health of the field.

--Technology only moves into products by pull from developers who really need it, not by push from researchers.

--New things need new companies; the old ones an happy to just improve what they have.

-- Research needs diverse sources of funding, with different goals and different ways of judging ideas.