The Impact of Computer Science

Hmm, been a while since I last blogged in any meaningful way - and I had such high hopes for this blog, too! I promise I'll be better over the summer.

Anyway, I feel moved to post about something I came across just this morning: a project to place the names of victims of 9/11 on a memorial in New York. The concept for the memorial was that names should be arranged not alphabetically, but rather according to where people were and who they were with when they died - linking victims through "meaningful adjacencies", in the words of the architect. It's a wonderful idea, but how could such a thing be achieved?

This is, of course, precisely the kind of problem that computer scientists like to tackle. I won't go into the details here, other than to note that guy implementing this, Jer Thorp, made some interesting use of Processing for the visualisation of victim relationships and name placement. You can read Jer's blog entry if you want to know more.

What strikes me most about this work is that it represents a very human and emotionally significant application of computer science. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that CS makes an impact only by improving technology, but this little project demonstrates brilliantly that it has the capacity to connect with human beings more directly than that.

Pilgrimage

Last week I at long last paid a visit to Bletchley Park, the centre of codebreaking efforts for the British during World War II and the birthplace of modern computing. The picture here shows the reconstructed Colossus Mk II, the world's first semi-programmable digital electronic computer, which helped to crack the Lorentz cipher used by the German High Command.

For a geek like me, standing in front of this as it whirred and clicked was a near-religious experience! The Bletchley Park huts are well worth a visit for anyone interested in cryptography or military history, and the existence of Colossus and The National Museum of Computing on site is the icing on the cake.

My photos of the day are available for viewing as a Flickr set or slideshow.