Who Are The All-Time Heroes of i-Technology?

The i-Technology Media!	Register \| Log in

.NET · AJAX · CLOUD · ECLIPSE · FLEX · OPEN WEB · iPHONE · JAVA · LINUX · OPEN SOURCE · ORACLE · PBDJ · SEARCH · SILVERLIGHT · SOA · VIRTUALIZATION · WEB 2.0 · WIRELESS · XML

Comments

Plone and Drupal: Different Approaches, Different Results

paul.nowak wrote: Matt, thanks for the comments. I made an error on the version of Plone. It's 2.5 Plone running on Zope 2.9x. In regards to the additional products, we have a skin installed and we have a product that we had custom developed for us that connects to a PostgreSQL database. We've looked at slow PostgreSQL queries causing problems and have not been able to find an issue. We've also tested for the case where the PostgreSQL server is down and have not been able to create an issue. We therefor...

Nov. 4, 2009 04:19 PM EST

Cloud Expo on Google News

Did you read today's front page stories & breaking news?

2009 East

PLATINUM SPONSORS:

IBM

Smarter Business Solutions Through Dynamic Infrastructure

IBM

Smarter Insights: How the CIO Becomes a Hero Again

Microsoft

Windows Azure

GOLD SPONSORS:

Appsense

Why VDI?

Maximizing the Business Value of Virtualization in Enterprise and Cloud Computing Environments

ExactTarget

Messaging in the Cloud - Email, SMS and Voice

Freedom OSS

Stairway to the Cloud

Sun

Sun's Incubation Platform: Helping Startups Serve the Enterprise

POWER PANELS:

Cloud Computing & Enterprise IT: Cost & Operational Benefits

How and Why is a Flexible IT Infrastructure the Key To the Future?

Click For 2008 West
Event Webcasts

2009 East

GOLD SPONSORS:

Get Your Transactions Under Control: SOA Performance Management

Software AG

Performance Driven Adoption: The Secret to Advancing SOA

Intel

The Evolving SOA Appliance: 3 Game-Changing Innovations

SILVER SPONSOR:

Denodo

Data Mashups: Deliver Your Project Faster with Virtualized Data Services Across Internal & External Sources

POWER PANELS:

The Business Value of Service Orientation

Driving Profitability Through User Experience

Click For 2008 West
Event Webcasts

Live Google News by SYS-CON!

Alan Turing

Brief Description: Mathematician; author of the seminal 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"

Further Details:

Widely deemed to be the de facto founder of computer science, Alan Mathison Turing was one of the great pioneers of the computer field. He inspired the now common terms of "The Turing Machine" and "Turing's Test." As a mathematician he applied the concept of the algorithm to digital computers. His research into the relationships between machines and nature created the field of artificial intelligence. His intelligence and foresight made him one of the first to step into the information age.

Upon graduating from King's College, Cambridge, he was made a Fellow and then moved on to Princeton University, where he explored what was later called the "Turing Machine" - essentially the same as today's multi-purpose computers. He described a machine that would read a series of ones and zeros from a tape. These ones and zeros described the steps that needed to be done to solve a particular problem or perform a certain task. The Turing Machine would read each of the steps and perform them in sequence, resulting in the proper answer.

This concept was revolutionary for the time. Most computers in the 1950s were designed for a particular purpose or a limited range of purposes. What Turing envisioned was a machine that could do anything, something that we take for granted today. The method of instructing the computer was very important in Turing's concept. He essentially described a machine which knew a few simple instructions. Making the computer perform a particular task was simply a matter of breaking the job down into a series of these simple instructions. This is identical to the process programmers go through today. He believed that an algorithm could be developed for most any problem. The hard part was determining what the simple steps were and how to break down the larger problems.

During World War II, Turing used his knowledge and ideas in the Department of Communications in Great Britain. There he used his mathematical skills to decipher the codes the Germans were using to communicate. This was an especially difficult task because the Germans had developed a type of computer called the Enigma. It was able to generate a constantly changing code that was impossible for the code breakers to decipher in a timely fashion.

During his time with the Department of Communications in Great Britain, Turing and his fellow scientists worked with a device called COLOSSUS. The COLOSSUS quickly and efficiently deciphered the German codes created by the Enigma. COLOSSUS was essentially a bunch of servomotors and metal, but it was one of the first steps toward the digital computer.

After World War II Turing went on to work for the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and continued his research into digital computers. Here he worked on developing the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE), one of the first attempts at creating a true digital computer. It was during this time that he began to explore the relationship between computers and nature. He wrote a paper called "Intelligent Machinery" which was later published in 1969. This was one of the first times the concept of artificial intelligence was raised.

Turing was truly one of the great forerunners in the field of computers. Today's computer scientists still refer to his papers. The concept of the algorithm lies at the heart of every computer program for any type of digital computer.

[Biography by John M. Kowalik]

Published Feb. 5, 2007— Reads 152,339 — Feedback 48
Copyright © 2007 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

▪ Does i-Technology Matter?

▪ Where's i-Technology Headed in 2007?

▪ Who Are the Top 100 i-Technology Heroes?

▪ Sun Co-Founder to Lead Cloud Start-Up

▪ Brad Templeton: Pioneer Whose Company Began the Dot-Com Era

▪ Andy Bechtolsheim’s Off Reinventing the World Again

▪ National Security Technology Summit

▪ Oracle+MySQL Opponents Take to the Barricades

About Jeremy Geelan
Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the all-new International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series, of the International Virtualization Conference & Expo series, of AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo series, and of the long-running SOAWorld Conference & Expo series. He's founder of Cloud Computing Journal, Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal and other leading SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.

Reader Feedback: Page 1 of 4

#48	Justin Hart commented on 18 Feb 2007 Vint Cerf's name is Vinton Cerf, not Vincent Cerf.
#47	pvdg commented on 9 Feb 2007 I'd begin with: N°1 : Charles Babbage (designed the first computer) N°2 : Konrad Zuse (built the first working computer)
#46	pvdg commented on 9 Feb 2007 What about Seymour Cray? Bill Gates was a "hero of i-Technology" and I didn't know? What technology did he invented?
#45	kjell krona commented on 6 Feb 2007 In your list of IT heroes, I am missing some of the important people involved in the Graphical User Interface, as first instantiated in Macintosh UI (and later was copied by Microsoft): Douglas Engelbart, who at SRI in the 60's invented, among other things, the idea of a mouse, overlapping windows, hypertext, outlining, video collaboration, and many other things that later inspired a lot of people to improve interaction with computers; Larry Tesler, who at Xerox Parc (working with Alan Kay on Smalltalk) invented among other things the modeless editor and, I believe, cut/copy/paste, and later moved to Apple and worked on the Lisa and Macintosh; Bill Atkinson, who wrote the "Quickdraw" graphics layer in Macintosh, proving that advanced bitmapped graphics was possible on a low-end processor; the orignal MacPaint, basically the predecessor to Photoshop, without which the graphical world today would be lost; and Apple HyperCard, which with its successors showed what "user programming" could mean, and accustomed people to the idea of "linking" pieces of information with clickable buttons, which subsequently exploded in the World Wide Web. - kjell
#44	Lars Arvestad commented on 6 Feb 2007 \|\| m6 commented on the 6 Feb 2007: \|\| Can someone explain to me why Jamie Z is \|\| a hero? The word "hero" should of course be used sparingly, and probably not in adjunction to "tech", but JWZ holds his place among the Big Hackers, IMHO. Some of his accomplishments, in no particular order: * XEmacs. He was one of (the?) main people making a user-friendly version of GNU Emacs. * XKeyCaps. This little application has really helped me getting a sane keyboard layout under X a few times. * Mosaic. I believe he was the main hacker on the Unix version of the first "real" browser. And one of the first employees at Netscape.
#43	fm6 commented on 6 Feb 2007 Can someone explain to me why Jamie Z is a hero? I only know him from reading his comments in the Netscape keyboard resource file when I was trying to get the browser to behave under Linux. These left me with a permanent dislike for the dude: instead of explaining the format of the file, he put in lengthy sarcastic (and misinformed) rants about the "mistakes" made by various Unix vendors in designing their keyboards.
#42	Ron Blessing commented on 5 Feb 2007 Every time I see one of the computer Hall of Fame articles in a magazine it seems to me there is always one glaring omission. I know there are many that have contributed but I feel like there are two people that deserve to be mentioned and always seem to be missed. Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, in my opinion, started what eventually led to our current Internet when they launched the first dialup Bulletin Board system called CBBS. In addition, Ward developed the first widespread file transfer protocol, XMODEM, which allowed files to be transferred error free between bulletin boards around the world. ...Ron Blessing
#41	Grady Booch commented on 5 Feb 2007 I'm quite flatted that you've numbered me among your top twenty all-time technology heroes. As for the Renaissance jazz bit, I play the Celtic harp, on which I perform a number of medieval and renaissance pieces. I once had an instructor who taught me some great improvisational skills, and thus the phrase, Renaissance jazz, for I like to do riffs off of really old themes. I think I would have been an itinerant musician or a priest if I were not doing software :-) Grady
#40	InOtherNews commented on 5 Feb 2007 Yakov Fain has devised his own version over here: http://yakovfain.javadevelopersjournal.com/who_are_the_heroes_of_itechno... in case anyone wants to take a look.
#39	More Nominees commented on 5 Feb 2007 There's a great supplemetary list by Mark Hinkle here: http://www.encoreopus.com/content/view/334/35/. Among the new names he adds are Jarkko Oikarinen, Bram Cohen, and Jerry Yang & David Filo, the founders of Yahoo!
#38	i-net user commented on 5 Feb 2007 Congratulaions, you have just insured that I will never willing used AJAX in any of my projects. Your pop-over add that blocks the article is annoying at best.
#37	Barry Threw commented on 5 Feb 2007 Vannevar Bush Norbert Weiner John Von Neumann Claude Shannon John Pierce
#36	kelley meck commented on 4 Feb 2007 You have to include Claude Shannon, and you might want to consider Oliver Selfridge. Shannon was the mathematician who figured information theory, and Selfridge started everything behind neural networks--which have never caught up with modal programming, but whose promise is unbounded.
#35	Lee Butler commented on 4 Feb 2007 You should also remember Michael J. Muuss. He developed "ping" and was instrumental in some of the developments of TCP/IP and Unix in the early days. He worked at the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory.
#34	Carsten Schlemm commented on 4 Feb 2007 Jeremy, I am a bit disappointed you forgot Konrad Zuse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuse). His problem is that he doesn't have an Anglosaxon name.... Judge for yourself. Cheers, Carsten