Tölvumál - 01.11.2015, Qupperneq 28

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Gérard Philippe Berry is a French computer scientist, Professor at
Collège de France, member of French Academy of Sciences (Académie
des sciences), French Academy of Technologies (Académie des
technologies), and Academia Europaea. Researcher at Ecole des
Mines and Inria since 1973, he was the Chief Scientist Officer of Esterel
Technologies from 2000 to 2009. He held the 2007-2008 yearly Liliane
Bettencourt chair of Technological Innovation and the 2009-2010
yearly Informatics and Digital Sciences chair at the Collège de France.
Berry’s work, which spans over more than 30 years, brought important
contributions to three main fields: lambda calculus and functional
programming, parallel and real-time programming languages and
design automation for synchronous digital circuits. Berry is best known
as the conceptor of the Esterel programming language. (1)
Berry visited Iceland this fall and agreed on an interview for Tölvumál.
When he was 17 years old he found a computer that at that time did
not even have electronic memory, but when he was trying to program it
he became fascinated by the difference between himself and the
computer. He realised how stupid but completely exact the computer
was, opposite to what he considered himself to be. He was interested
in math and computers, and he wanted to be the clever man working
with the stupid machine. At that time computer science was a new and
exciting discipline developing fast. This fascinated the young man.
During the years Berry has worked both with software and hardware.
His works on control software for airplanes and other systems led the
development of the Esterel programming language, which was then
also applied to the design of electronic circuits.
He started the Esterel Technologies company that was working both
with software and hardware, but later focused more on software.
“Software is easy to change and is flexible, but hardware is not, and a
bug in a chip costs a lot so you have to be very exact when working
with hardware. It is a similar challenge to build software programs that
drive safety-critical systems like airplanes and to qualify them. More
surprisingly, the technical background is not really different”.
Berry considers the current development of software often to be of
poor quality and as an example he mentions software for cars: “You
cannot have bugs in software for airplanes, but somehow it is
considered less important to make bug-free software for cars. Today’s
cars have far too many software bugs, including w.r.t. cyber- security.
Security is a big deal, since designing a secure system or patching an
unsecure system is difficult. There has to be more emphasis on
security.”
Berry has worked in academia, but he soon in his carrier realised that
he could not follow the applications into its partner companies. They
use algorithms and ideas from academia, but the real developments
are done in secret so academia cannot have a deep impact. This is why
he switched to industry when his technology became mature.
Presently, Berry is working at the Collège De France, which was
established in 1530 by King François 1st as a more open alternative to
the Sorbonne. The King wanted the institution to teach everything to
everyone. Today there are 42 professors in different subjects including
mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, history, oriental studies,
philosophy, social sciences, and other fields. The Collège does not
provide degrees, but has many excellent research laboratories and a
splendid research library. The duty of the professors is to teach a brand
new course each year and all their teaching is open to everyone. The
goal is to teach science in the making, science that is being done now,
science that is used now. Most courses are recorded and put on the
web as hour-long video or audio programs. This is very challenging for
the teachers: you have constantly to be up to date with what is going
on in your subject, to be open for new and different teaching methods,
and to think of how to simulate the attendants and get them interested.
The teaching is in French, but it is dubbed in English and for some
professors in Chinese.
Berry is preoccupied with education, “To teach and educate is a big
challenge. People do not know much about informatics, they do not
know how all the new systems works, and there is a lack of training in
the area. There is a challenge to educate people, not only those who
already studying computer science, but also those who are not yet
interested in computing. Information is everywhere, but knowledge of
how to collect, process, analyse, and use is lacking, while understanding
computing should be a part of everyone’s life. We need to open
education, open peoples mind, but there is lack of teachers to teach
informatics and computing. How and what to teach is an exciting
question, which also implies to know how other sciences work because
they all get computerized. School teachers that are teaching young
kids should know enough about programming so they can get the kids
interested in the field. MOOCs could be the opportunity to train teachers
in computing.” Berry sees exciting opportunities in this, especially for
teachers who need to change their teaching to reach out to all, not only
those who are already motivated. “If you look at science in the 20th
century, the main issues were matter, energy and waves, but not
informatics. It will be the number one topic in the 21th century”.
Politicians do not know about computing, they do not understand the
field, they are always too late to realise what the problems are and may
set laws that are outdated from the beginning. In Europa most
politicians are not familiar with science and computers. They do not
understand the field and often do not even use computers themselves.
As an example, lots of time and money was spent on setting laws to
forbid illegally downloading video and music from the web, even when
everyone had started to use streaming instead. They were hooked on
a problem that was bound to disappear, they did not see ahead or
follow the technical development.
Finally, Berry has this message to people in the computer industry in
Iceland: Open your mind, open your mind, there will be more surprising
times ahead, in computer science we are as physics were in 1920 so
there are exciting times ahead.
REFERENCE
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rard_Berry
OPEN YOUR MIND,
OPEN YOUR MIND!
Viðtalið tók Dr. Ásrún Matthíasdóttir, lektor við Háskólann í Reykjavík