Programming to 'Make Sparks Fly'?

Tools for making sure that "Sparks will Fly"
This year's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, titled "Sparks will Fly" were all about 'hacking' everyday objects to make them part of the Internet of Everything.  Presented by Prof. Danielle George from University of Manchester, they were a great showcase of how engineers tackle challenging problems by extending the capabilities of technologies like the light bulb, the telephone and the motor.

Across the three lectures, the audience got to take part in building systems that used internet connected lights to play Tetris on a London skyscraper, to holographic communications and a robotic orchestra.  Through this process, we understood how to build solutions to complex problems by:

  1. decomposing them into simpler sub-problems;
  2. identifying technologies that could help us solve the sub-problems, using techniques like abstraction and analogical reasoning;
  3. building prototypes to test our hypotheses about these technologies could be extended to solve each sub-problem; and
  4. integrating the individual solutions to build a system that addresses the initial challenge.
Although the engineer in me found this to be a very engaging way to inspire the next generation of inventors and engineers, the computer scientist in me was disappointed by the very cursory treatment of computing and computational thinking - with only the briefest references to programming in the first lecture.  This seemed like a missed opportunity but I guess with only three lectures to cover everything, something had to give.  Hopefully there will be a future lecture series that explores ubiquitous computing in greater depth - bringing to life the exciting opportunities (and threats!) of the Internet of Everything.




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