If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Science Times in yesterday’s New York Times — devoted entirely to “the future of computing”:

What’s next? If we had a supercomputer that could predict the future, we would tell you. Then again, if the past is any guide, the predictions would certainly be wrong. This special issue takes a many-faceted look at a set of technologies that are changing the world in more ways than could ever have been foreseen…

In addition to Times‘ science and technology writers John Markoff and Steve Lohr, several computing researchers have authored short essays about recent innovations — and future potential — within computing(after the jump):

Taking Faster and Smarter to New Physical Frontiers by Drew Endy: From scheduling conference rooms to rooting out incipient tumors, computers that can go to the information that we care greatly about.

 

 

Leave the Driving to the Car, and Reap the Benefits in Safety and Mobility by Sebastian Thrun: A Google team’s self-driving cars have traveled nearly 200,000 miles on public highways in California and Nevada, 100 percent safely.

 

 

Death Knell for the Lecture: Technology as a Passport to Personalized Education by Daphne Koller: Until now, it has been hard to see how to make individualized education affordable. But a dances in technology may provide a path to this goal.

 

 

Quantum Computing Promises New Insights, Not Just Supermachines by Scott Aaronson: Quantum computing is one of the most exciting things happening in science right now. Just not for the reasons you usually here.

 

 

In Planning Digital Defenses, the Biggest Obstacle is Human Ingenuity by Stefan Savage: Anticipating security threats is not merely a matter of reasoning abstractly about how new technology might raise new risks; it requires an understanding of human nature.

 

 

An Evolution Toward a Programmable Universe by Larry Smarr: With a harvest of data from a wired planet, computing has evolved from sensing local information to analyzing it to being able to control it.

 

 

In an Open-Source Society, Innovating by the Seat of Our Pants by Joichi Ito: The Internet is a belief system, a philosophy about the effectiveness of decentralized, bottom-up innovation. And it’s a philosophy that has begun to change how we think about creativity itself.

 

 

Computer Scientists May Have What It Takes to Help Cure Cancer by David Patterson: Computer scientists may have the best skills — they can use machines, algorithms and the wisdom of the crowd — to fight cancer.

 

 

Full Speed Ahead, Without a Map, Into New Realms of Possibility by Theodor Holm Nelson: We are in a world nobody designed or expected, driving full tilt toward — a wall? a cliff? a new dawn? We must choose wisely, as if we could.

And there’s even an interactive timeline illustrating past accomplishments, predictions of future breakthroughs — that readers can push forward or backward in time — and a form enabling readings to make and vote on additional predictions.

Check it out — in Tuesday’s New York Times‘ Science Times.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)