Think back for a minute to those early digital computers, circa 1948. Each of the contraptions filled a room. One math problem at a time, they helped researchers to calculate the trajectory of a ballistic missile, say, or crack the language of a secret military code. Despite everything we know today about what computers can do, says Bunting Fellow Lynn Andrea Stein, at a subconscious level our culture has not shaken the image of that clumsy, oversized hardware.
Innovations ranging from VCRs to the Internet redefine what computation means in everyday life.
Yet in many classrooms, even among computer scientists, the outdated notion persists. Stein '86 is an associate professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is on sabbatical as a 1997-98 Bunting Science Scholar, funded by the Office of Naval Research. Her work with artificial intelligence has helped to convince her that a new framework is needed for thinking about the role of computers in the world. Think of them, she tells her students, not merely as a bunch of processors performing sequential tasks, but as a set of interactive, concurrently functioning entities.