Emeagwali’s Internet of the Future Hailed as
“Utterly Wondrous, Yet Frightening”
Listen to the radio advertisement for Emeagwali’s
lecture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPGtUABfLMI
On
Emeagwali spoke before this capacity crowd of 500 at the
John F. Kennedy Auditorium of The University of the
Behind the Internet
Computer genius thrills at
Emancipation lecture series
(TrinidadExpress.com[O1])
Dr Philip Emeagwali
takes us from the blackboard to the drawing board to the motherboard and then
to what he considers as the mother of all motherboards-the super computer. A
mind which engineered the linking of 65336 electronic processors, to be able to
compute 3.1 billions calculations per second using physics, mathematics and
computing, and won the Gordon Bell Prize in 1989, (considered the Nobel Prize
of computing), was last in class at the age of five and has been a child
soldier in Nigeria during a vicious war. Called by President Bill Clinton,
"one of the great minds of the Information Age.", Dr Emeagwali has certainly overcome some grand challenges to
achieve significant milestones in his lifetime.
Dr Emeagwali
was the guest of the Emancipation Support Committee (ESC) for the launch of the
Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture
Series 2008 last Sunday at the University of the
Noted as the "Bill Gates of
At the launch of the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture
Series, at the JFK Lecture Theatre, a capacity 500-strong audience listened
attentively as Dr Emeagwali painted a picture of the
internet from the moon, "Just picture the Internet as an electronic web
over the earth, the 8th continent, with millions of twinkling points, a feast
for the eyes and the mind."
Asked what was the transforming moment
in his life-Dr Emeagwali stated, "When I was 5
years old, my father recognised that I was slow in
Math, he worked with me, pushing me until eventually I
could do 100 questions in an hour. His efforts pushed me beyond my comfort
zone. Parents must set higher standards for their children and push them beyond
their comfort zone. We must remember that every genius is an ordinary person
who did extraordinary things." His prowess in mathematics earned him the
nickname "Calculus" at University.
Asked about his experiences as a black
man in the white-dominated area of computing and mathematics-Dr Emeagwali recounted the fact that in the early days he
often had to deny his blackness, and to be accommodating to everyone, just to
fit in. However, because of his blackness-he was forced to work alone, and it
is this work that has brought him international success and recognition. He
also tells the story of an artist preparing a sketch of him for a publication
using his features, but portraying him as a white man. "We must never
allow others to project their image of us, on us. We must maintain our own identity."
"Emancipation means for me, not
just a freeing of the body-but also of the mind, we must be at the edge of
knowledge in all our fields. We can not be fully emancipated if we lack
intellectual capital. Five thousand years ago
"In the past men fought with
swords and bayonets, today you must be equally armed, not with weapons but with
knowledge and new techniques to achieve our own emancipation."
The Kwame Ture Lecture Series continues with another free lecture by
lecturer, economist, columnist; Dennis Pantin on the
topic Capitalism and the destruction of the Environment; New Challenges to
Human Survival and Development at the National Museum Annex, Fredrick Street,
Port of Spain from 7 p.m. tomorrow. For further information call the
Emancipation Secretariat at 628-5008.
Beyond the Last Computer
I
thank the Emancipation Support Committee for inviting me to Port-of-Spain,
As we
heed Kwame Ture’s call, and
march together across the world stage, let us never forget that we are the
torchbearers
of
his legacy of fighting for the emancipation of Africans at home
and
in the Diaspora.
It is
a privilege to be invited to The University of the
Walk
with me down memory lane. The time: 39 years ago. The place: the bank of the
River Niger in
I felt
the hard, cold steel of a gun against the back of my head. I spun around and saw my assailant’s finger shaking on the trigger: “Don't run or I'll shoot you,[O2]” he said. I was just 14 years old, and
death was a stranger to me.
It was
1969, and
When
the 30-month war ended on
There my thoughts returned to a
love abandoned three years earlier—mathematical physics. This love affair
blossomed when I was a refugee in
Unaware
that I had just been introduced to the most important law in physics, I was,
nevertheless, awestruck.
Three
hundred and thirty years later, we still do not completely understand F=ma But
it is the only formula that is integral to computing’s
20 grand challenges and mathematics’ seven millennium problems. I devoted many
years devising a solution to one grand challenge. While conventional wisdom
suggested it would be almost impossible to harness the power of 65,536
processors my grand challenge was to prove otherwise.
Initially, the challenge seemed
deceptively simple; but in reality, there were so many different tiers of
complexity that I sometimes forgot why I was programming those 65,536
processors. In hindsight, I did just about everything wrong before I finally
got it right. Research is a high-risk game, but, as they say, nothing ventured,
nothing gained.
The complexity of the grand challenge
renders it as incomprehensible to laypeople as pages of hieroglyphics or Greek
symbols. Concisely, the challenge used the Second Law of Motion propagated
along a virtual 16-dimensional hypercubic network to
be executed by 65,536 processors. These processors are the beginning of the
end. I started at the end because the end is devoid of the complex proofs and
dense mathematical language that are unfathomable to non-mathematicians.
This grand challenge earned its name:
it was a super problem that required one to think in ways that merge the laws
of physics, logic, and numbers in 16-dimensional mathematical space, and to
solve the problem by attacking it from three perspectives.
Walk
with me as I tell a story that will take you from the Second Law of Motion to
the blackboard, to the motherboard, to the mother of all motherboards: a one-of-a-kind
computer powered by 65,536 processors. Every scientific discovery begins as a
thought. The strategy for harnessing these laws of physics, logic, and numbers
has to be conceived and thought out before becoming reality.
I visualized the grand challenge
problem as a complex game with complex parameters, which I solved using three
simple rules. First, I harnessed the power of processors to perform myriad
computations. Second, I followed a minimum number of communication pathways to
perform a minimum number of communications. Third, I enforced the Second Law of
Motion in models of all that flows underneath the Earth.
In all, I had 65,536 processors and
over one million pathways. The processors-plus-pathways make a computer a
supercomputer, and a planet-sized supercomputer an Internet.
I have been asked: “What gave you the confidence to tackle one of computing’s grand challenges?”
My answer — fifteen years of putting into practice the athlete’s five P mantra: Proper Preparation Prevents
Poor Performance.
In the 1980s, I was
a mathematical physicist logged on 24/7 to a 65,536-brain supercomputer on
think.com —the third registered dot com ever. It was an unpaid labor of love. I
was tormented by self-doubt, a maniac who pushed his supercomputer to its breaking
point.
Each one of us must learn to move
outside our comfort zones. We learn with each step we take into the unknown.
When I was five, my father discovered that I was slow in mathematics. He
decided to teach me to solve 100 math problems in one hour. Thereafter, my
ability to do rapid calculations earned me the nickname “Calculus” and set me
on the path to become a supercomputer scientist who solved one of the most
difficult problems in mathematics.
My father helped propel me beyond my
comfort zone. His child, once considered slow at mathematics, is now making his
living by performing the fastest calculations ever seen. My father created
strength from my limitations by recognizing and acknowledging them, and by
challenging me to remove myself from my comfort zone.
My father did not help me conquer my
fear of math. Instead, he attempted to reveal my individual potential, something
that every child has but few parents take the time to help develop. If you are
looking for a “child genius,” keep looking … every genius is an ordinary person
who accomplished an extraordinary thing. Your child has more talent than you
know, and if you realize that fact,
you will raise a genius!
What if my father had allowed me to run
away from math? I would have been math “illiterate.” If my father had not
acknowledged my mathematical limitations, I would not have become a mathematician
who solved one of the grand challenges.
The Emancipation Support Committee asked
me: What are tomorrow’s grand challenges? How do we
cross technological frontiers to conquer tomorrow’s grand challenges?
Crossing the frontiers of knowledge to
conquer tomorrow’s grand challenges will demand revolutionary techniques. To
solve this problem, I used the American Revolutionary War as a metaphor
for what happens when a revolutionary
technique is introduced to support a revolutionary technology.
In the 18the century, people fought
with swords, by lining up and charging one another. When long rifles — with short swords
called bayonets — were
invented, armies continued their conventional fighting format: lining up in
opposing lines and mowing each other down with gunfire.
Many lives later, they realized that a
new fighting technique must follow the new gun technology. Kwame
Ture, Stokely Carmichael,
realized that a new fighting technique must be
used to gain our political emancipation.
The same can be applied to your
personal and professional lives. At the crucial moments, the turning points, in
your career and life -marriage, birth and death - you may have to change your
approach,
find new techniques.
In my new technique, my 65,536
processors perform computations side by side, linked by 16 wires, each
corresponding to the 16 sides of a 16-dimensional hypercube. This is the
essence of “higher” mathematics: go beyond calculus and mine infinite
dimensional spaces.
My
multicolored drawings of the hypercube are a feast for the eye; programming
them is a feast for the mind. The hypercubic
circuitry of the supercomputer left me breathless. I was awestruck by its 16
unique information pathways coming from each processing node. Has there ever
been any technology as gorgeously complicated as the hypercube supercomputer?
For
me, it was love at first sight. It was hypercubic
elegance that engaged me emotionally, imaginatively and computationally.
I was
asked: Where is the frontier of the Internet? Today, the Internet is being
reinvented as the eighth continent - it is our 21st-century frontier, our terra
incognita, an electronic canopy, a borderless community, a virtual landmass. Our
image of the future inspires the present, and the present creates the future.
Today’s
supercomputer will become the ordinary computer of tomorrow, while the Internet
becomes our shared planet-sized supercomputer.
One
day, the Internet will become our shared planet-sized supercomputer and
individuals will become nodes on the Internet and the Internet, as we know it,
will become obsolete and “disappear” into our collective memory.
By
definition, both the supercomputer and the Internet consist of connected nodes
working in harmony. In fact, the supercomputer is more about communication than
computation. The supercomputer and the Internet link computation and
communication into a congruent whole - two complementary sides of a coin.
As the
computer evolves into the supercomputer, and the supercomputer evolves into the
Internet, and the Internet evolves into humanity, all that will remain will be
a HyperBall superbrain — an electronic, organic Web 10,000 miles in diameter encompassing
the Earth. The nodes will be people, embedded in an interconnected network of
humanity working as one.
If history repeats itself, the supercomputer of today will become the
ordinary computer of tomorrow. This core technology could evolve to become
iconic, a masterpiece, a legacy, a legend, and a contribution to civilization.
Each new “grand challenge” met becomes another beacon guiding humanity forward
into the age of information.
Excerpted
from a lecture
delivered by Philip Emeagwali at the University of
the
Philip Emeagwali has been called “a father of the Internet” by
CNN
and TIME , and extolled as “one of the great minds of
the Information Age” by former U.S. President Bill
Clinton . He won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, the Nobel prize of
supercomputing.
“The complexity of the grand challenge
renders it as incomprehensible to lay people as pages of hieroglyphics or Greek
symbols,” declared Philip Emeagwali
DOWNLOAD HIGH RESOLUTION at
http://emeagwali.com/booking/speaking/photos/B1.jpg
A 32-node extract
from a 65,536-node hypercubic
processors-plus-pathways.
“My multicolored drawings of the hypercube are a feast for the eye,” says Philip Emeagwali.
DOWNLOAD HIGH RESOLUTION at
http://emeagwali.com/booking/speaking/photos/H2.jpg
