Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing

In March 1997, the Association for Computing Machinery will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the electronic computer. To understand what an extraordinary fifty years the computer has had, you need only look around you--probably no farther than your desk. Computers are everywhere: in our cars, our homes, our supermarkets, at the phone company office, and at your local hospital. But as the contributors to this volume make clear, the scientific, social and economic impact of computers is only beginning to be felt. These sixteen invited essays on the future of computing take on a dazzling variety of topics, with opinions from such experts as Gordon Bell, Sherry Turkle, Edsger W. Dijkstra, Paul Abraham, Donald Norman, Franz Alt, and David Gelernter. This brilliantly eclectic collection, commissioned to celebrate a major milestone in an ongoing technological revolution, will fascinate anybody with an interest in computers and where they're taking us.

Robert Metcalfe is the inventor of the Ethernet technology and founder of the 3Com corporation. He is currently vice-president, technology at IDG and executive correspondent for Infoworld, where he writes a column that reaches over 500,000 readers worldwide. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard.

Peter J. Denning is associate dean for computing and chair of the Computer Science Department in the School of Information Technology and Engineering at George Mason University. He was formerly the founding director of the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science at the NASA Ames Research Center, and the president of the Association for Computing Machinery 1980-82.