Conference Focuses on 'The Mobile Future'

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Conference Focuses on 'The Mobile Future'

An interview with James Morris

4/23/2008

By Mary Grush

Carnegie Mellon University's West Coast Campus and UC Berkeley's Fisher IT Center at the Haas School of Business partnered to hold a conference Tuesday of this week in Santa Clara, CA, on "The Mobile Future: Technology Revolutionizing Our Lives." CT talked with James H. Morris, dean of CMU West and a professor of computer science, about the unique conference that brings together both academics and industry leaders.

CT: Why have CMU West and UC Berkeley's Fisher IT Center at the Haas School of Business decided to hold a conference event on “The Mobile Future”?

JM: As you know, Carnegie Mellon and UC Berkeley are leading universities in engineering and technology, and it’s become apparent to us, as well as many people, that the future of computing and Internet expansion is actually going to be happening more on mobile devices like cell phones than on computers like laptops. So, we think that this will be a significant change for everybody and we wanted to provide useful information for our friends in Silicon Valley -- for technical managers and professionals, academics, and investors -- who are trying to stay ahead of this fast-moving force but in fact in some ways are so much in the middle of it that they don’t have time to step back for a day and understand where it’s going to be in several years. (Photo: Jim Morris at The Mobile Future conference)

What types of technologies will the conference be looking at in particular?

The technologies we’re most interested in are the hardware and especially the software involved with handheld devices, like the Apple iPhone, software like Google’s Android system, and lots of infrastructure, such as the whole cell phone system as it’s provided by the wireless carriers in this country and other countries. It’s a huge technological system that is evolving around us, aimed basically at providing communications facilities for the people of the world.

We are probably going to be talking mostly about software -- Carnegie Mellon emphasizes software in computer technology -- but also about new product ideas that may be supported by that software.

CMU has always informed industry about new technologies. Could you comment on your own institution’s role -- both CMU and CMU West – in fostering technology change or even technology revolution, either within higher education or in a more generalized marketplace?

Many years ago I was one of the participants in Carnegie Mellon’s Andrew system, which exploited personal computers and networking to transform our campus into a modern campus that led the way for computer systems that not only supported campuses, but became the model for a lot of computing systems everywhere. So, the interesting lesson from that is that Carnegie Mellon didn’t invent the personal computer, and didn’t really invent the local area network, but made the campus into a huge test bed for showing a new basis for computing based on those technologies. And of course, we got wonderful support from IBM and other companies, including Apple and Digital Equipment, to show how these new products could be used to make computing at the time a much more dynamic and useful utility for a group of people.