How SuperComputing is like MegaDeath

Jeez, has it really been since Novemember 9th that I last posted? I’m so ashamed.

Alright, so here’s my obligatory excuse: Besides the fact that I have a well-documentated case of “the lazies”, I’ve been spending a large part of my time attending this years SuperComputing Conference here in Seattle. My boss bought the whole company technical passes for lectures and panel discussions on a whole range of grid computing solutions and I got a chance to geek out and explore a completely foreign world.

I was really fascinated by all the the problems people are finding, and even more so - the great lengths they will go to in an attempt to solve them. I could have spent months there and would have still walked away feeling like an ameatur - but I still felt I learned a lot.

There were presentations on things like Nanotechnology, Bioinformatics, a history of animation/video rendering presented by Disney, and even one on some of the burgeoning horizons in FORTRAN (not so burgeoning). One guy managed to talk for an hour and a half about the power and compexity of just one of his algorithms, which consequently allowed me to get a better look at the insides of my eyelids.

I’m really thankful that I got to listen live to all these lectures (even though a lot of it flew many leagues above my head). The whole thing was quite exciting - I mean, I was listening to speakers from Intel, Sun Microsystems, Globus, Cray, even Bill Gates (I’ll get to that in a minute). And from what I can gather this is going to be a major deal pretty soon and the industry is seriously considering making a push into parallel computing.

Naturally, there were a few things that really bothered me. I can handle listening to people discuss their far out ideas on the magic of quantum computers, or the benefits of simulating amino acids to help in medicine, or large scale grids helping to chart predictions of large weather storms. Nothing about them seems explicitly harmful, though if I wanted to be critical I could think of some things to ask. For instance, isn’t it a little strange that there was just so much talk about how we’ll be able to predict weather. It seemed kind of dishonest that this was primary example used over and over as proof positive of the benefits of grid technology. I know that we just had the whole Katrina fiasco, but other than that, who really cares about the weather? Where are all the discussions on the military uses of this technology?
Plus, alot of these supposed problems with wierd new diseases and global warming symptoms reminds me of an anecdote about medievel monks who used to try and figure out how many angels could balance on the head of a needle; it’s not that computational chemsitry isn’t worth researching, but there are more pressing matters of the moment and if we look to those instead, all of our “problems” wont’ be so overwhelming.

These kinds of discussions were not the most gut-wrenching though. I remember watching a Boeing presentation with penguins (??) showing that supercomputing can solve problems of Defense and Homeland Security while also figuring out how to make potato chips more aerodynamic (I’m not making that up). This was one of the only references to the military that I saw the entire weekend, and while there was plenty of talk about how Pringles are reaping the benefits of grid computing - the military implications were very quickly glossed over.

Perhaps the most infuriating talk for me featured a professor from USC, who did a presentation on the science behind video games. Apparently this is the same guy who made “America’s Army”, the military recruiting game that “instills the values of the armed forces” and/or teaches you to kill brown people. I did not hestitate to give him my really ugly stare, which I think he noticed.

America’s Army seems like pampers compared to his next big project. Check this out: he quite proudly admitted his involvement in this new “headband” technology that will be coming out within the next two years and it apparently can map which part of a child’s brain is currently being stimulated. These devices can be made very cheaply (under 50 bucks) and can be sync’d up with “educational” software designed to monitor if a student is “learning something new”, “relearning”, “frustrated” etc - and hence respond with suitable course materials in real time.

I don’t have the direct quote, but Mr. Z’s reasons that this technology arose out of a problem with too many children who can no longer concentrate on human teachers, having been overstimulated with video games. What we need, according to Mr. Z, is to find a solution to this problem by totally catering to the child’s fried neurons.

This theme just kept hitting me over and over again - using a quasi-solution on a symptom of a much larger problem, whether or not it would cause EVEN MORE PROBLEMS.

This guy’s presenation really fucking creeped me out. When someone stood up and asked why he had no ethics classes in his course requirements he said that those kinds of issues are outside the scope of knowledge he is introducing, and better left to parents to instill. I swear I saw his forked tongue flicker at this moment.

Which reminds me: One of the last days of the conference, I got up extra early just so I could catch a glimpse of Bill Gates keynote speech. I wanted to be within breathing distance of the richest man in the world and see if I could suck up some of his divine aura. When we reached the clearance gates I noticed the throngs of folks trying to get in and suddenly the rush of people came to a halt.

My boss and I stood in line totally perplexed and the buzz starting going around that the main auditorium was full. My boss, a diehard Mac guy, was not in the slightest miffed by the ordeal - so when guards finally agreed to squeeze in a few more people he touched my shoulder and said “go for it kid. If I can’t make it in, go without me.” It was a pretty dramatic scene, like something right out of Schindler’s List.

The funny thing is - I WAS THE LAST ONE THEY LET THROUGH, so I got to do the whole turn around in slow motion and watch the security guards push everyone back as my boss slipped away into the crowd.

But it didn’t end so triumphantly. Eventually they everyone in, only they put them in these side rooms that were suspciously already set up with chairs and huge projectors. I may be wrong but it makes me think it was some sort of publicity stunt to make Mr. Gates appear more popular. His speech wasn’t especially thrilling and I couldn’t believe I had to sit there and view him through a giant screen and not meet his eye in a huge public lecture hall.

That’s when I felt it the strongest - I put my feet up on a chair and drank the complimentary coffee and looked at all these people staring at their laptops and only fringely listening to the speech - and got a chill.

What exactly are we all working towards here?