SC07 Day 3: Programming bits and atoms
A computer is a tool and a program is a thing, said Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT during the SC07 keynote on Tuesday. The audience was a little skeptical. "If programs are things," pointed out one attendee, "then bugs are consequential." Do we need to fear being outwitted, outsmarted, and outplayed by self-fabricated machines we helped create?