Join the Department of Information Systems and Technology for an informative, free lecture.
Past Technology Talks
Alex, I’ll Take “The Future?” for $200
Speaker: Watson
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to create a machine to behave as intelligently as a human. While the science has had a few successes, such as a computer beating a grand master at chess, there are still areas that the science is far from being competitive with a human being. One such area is the ability to answer general questions, such as you find on the game show Jeopardy!
That gap may be closing, however, as IBM has created a computer, Watson, that comes close to understanding—and answering!—spoken questions posed in natural language. In fact, that computer will compete with the two biggest winners on Jeopardy!, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, and the show will be telecast on February 14.
Come watch history in the making as a computer takes on two master players on Jeopardy! in real time. A short introduction to the computer will be presented prior to the 7 p.m. broadcast. Pizza and refreshments will be served during the show. All are welcome.
Computer Forensics and Elections
Speaker: Rebecca Mercuri, Ph.D.
Presented by the Information Science and Technology Department in cooperation with the History and Political Science Department and Sociology and Criminology Department
Although forensics is a well-established discipline in biology, medicine, physics, materials and other sciences, its applications to computing are still relatively new. The television shows NUMB3RS and CSI have helped popularize the field by providing insight into algorithmic methods used to solve crimes. While digital data is now ubiquitous to everyday life, computer forensics involves much more than simply recovering and reviewing files found on electronic media. This talk will overview the legal and technical issues that expert witnesses need to consider when preparing testimony for court, and will also include some examples of socio-political problems related to the investigation of electronic voting systems.
Related Papers by the Speaker:
About the Speaker:
Rebecca Mercuri is the lead forensic expert at Notable Software, Inc. , the company she founded in 1981. Her caseload has included matters involving contraband, child endangerment, murder, computer viruses and malware, wrongful work termination, class-action suits, copyright and patent infringement, and election recounts (most notably Bush vs. Gore).
Dr. Mercuri has provided formal testimony and comment to the House Science Committee, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the Election Assistance Commission, the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, the U.K. Cabinet, and numerous state legislatures and municipal bodies. She is a senior life member of the Association for Computing Machinery, where she has authored the Security Watch feature and numerous guest columns of Inside Risks for Communications magazine, and is a co-founder and past chair of the professional joint chapter of the Princeton ACM/IEEE Computer Society. Rebecca is also an adjunct member of the Computer Engineering faculty at The College of New Jersey, where she teaches a broad range of topics, including a senior engineering lecture/laboratory elective on Digital Forensics.
Tapping Into Apps:
Local and Cloud Services on the iPhone and Android
Speaker: Douglas Dixon
Smartphones are the new platform, and apps are the core.
Apple reports that the App Store for iPhone has surpassed 140,000 applications, and users have downloaded over 3 billion apps – not bad for a new market that was created only a year and a half earlier. Meanwhile, Google’s Android Market doubled over the last quarter to around 20,000 apps.
This talk will explore the range of apps being developed for these new platforms.
In particular, beyond rude sound effects and popping bubbles, developers are leveraging both the intelligence of the handset and the power of back-end cloud computing to provide new kinds of timely services. For example, location-based services now go beyond displaying maps to find a nearby Starbucks or report the lowest local prices for gas, and providing the pulse of the neighborhood from real-time Twitter feeds. New “augmented reality” services can use a smartphone’s camera to provide information on what’s around you – to look up a product bar code, or an interesting landmark or painting, or to identify the buildings that you see in front of you.
So bring your favorite apps, and think about future possibilities. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine face recognition apps that can identify business colleagues – and perform instant background checks on potential dates.
About the Speaker:
Douglas Dixon is an independent technology consultant, author, and speaker specializing in digital media. A graduate of Brown University, and previously a product manager and software developer at Intel and Sarnoff, he is the author of four books and has published hundreds of feature articles.
Doug writes for magazines including Videomaker, Digital Photographer, and Condé Nast Traveler, and the U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton. He also was editor-in-chief of Mediaware magazine and tech editor of Camcorder & Computer Video. He has presented over a hundred seminars and talks on digital media over the past ten years, at conferences including CES and NAB. His consulting work includes expert witness services, for cases including RealNetworks v. DVD CCA / MPAA and Apple Computer v. Burst.com. Doug posts regularly on digital media on his Manifest Technology blog, and makes his articles and technical references freely available on his website (www.manifest-tech.com).