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Publisher's Note: When we decided that it was exactly the right time to create a new pictorial meta system for programming massive systems, we started looking around for biological feats of engineering that would serve as either inspiration or proof cases that this could actually be done.
Thanks to Chris Johnson, a longtime SNS member and FiRe presenter, and head of the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, for solving this problem by introducing me to Bryan William Jones, who's doing world-class research into how the retina acts as a very high level pre-compute device for the brain.
Yes, this appears to be the most amazing biological example of taking the compute load off of the central system by doing "edge computing" (think IoT), but doing it at a level of complexity that is truly mind-blowing.
In my first phone call with Bryan, we quickly got more and more excited about positioning his research and discoveries in this larger frame of very advanced computing. "I knew that someday people would realize the importance of the retina in computing," he told me," and that day seems to be today."
A few hours after Bryan and I talked at FiRe, we gave our CTO Design Challenge participants the job of designing a new way of Pictorial Programming which would be informed by all they had heard during that morning, including Bryan's talk. Three-and-a-half days later, they came back to the group with the world's first systems design for this entirely new concept in controlling systems from the 200k-foot level. I think our members will find this material to be intellectually life-changing. - mra
The Eye-Brain Machine: Computing's Next Model?
A Conversation with Bryan William Jones, Retinal Neuroscientist and Principal Investigator / Director, Marclab for Connectomics, University of Utah
With host Mark Anderson
FiRe 2017 Conference
Wednesday, October 11, 2017 Stein Eriksen Deer Valley Park City, Utah
