Brian Kernighan speaking at the Princeton ACM, April 24

[Walt Mankowski <waltman@pobox.com>]

As I mentioned at dinner tonight, Brian Kernighan will be speaking at
the Princeton ACM on Thursday, April 24 at 8 PM.  For information and
a map of the meeting location, see
http://www.acm.org/chapters/princetonacm/mtg0304.html

Here's the abstract for his talk:

	    PRINCETON ACM / IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY CHAPTERS
		       APRIL 2003 JOINT MEETING

	 WHAT SHOULD AN EDUCATED PERSON KNOW ABOUT COMPUTERS?

			   Brian Kernighan
			 Princeton University

All of us are affected by computing, in ways we may not even
realize. Some of the technology is highly visible, like personal
computers and the Internet; most is invisible, like the
microprocessors in cars and appliances, the programs that fly planes
and control telephones, power systems and medical equipment, or the
myriad systems that quietly collect personal data about us.

Even though most people will not be directly involved with programming
such systems, everyone is strongly affected by them, so an educated
person should have a good, if rather high level, understanding of how
computer hardware, software, and networks operate. This includes
knowing what programs are and understanding why programming is
hard. It means being informed about issues like usability,
reliability, security, privacy, and some of the inherent limitations
of computers. It should include some idea of the history of computing
and enough understanding of the technologies to make reasonable
guesses about the future.

This talk is based on my experience developing and teaching "Computers
in Our World," a Princeton course for students in the humanities and
social sciences. The course is meant to describe how computing works -
hardware, software, networking, and systems build upon them - for a
non-technical audience. The intent, or perhaps just fond hope, is not
only to help students understand specific technologies, but also how
to reason about how systems work and how to be intelligently skeptical
about technology and technological claims.

Brian Kernighan received his PhD from Princeton in 1969 and was in the
Computing Science Research center at Bell Labs until 2000. He is now a
professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton, where he
writes programs and occasional books. The latter are better than the
former, and certainly need less maintenance.
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