Featured in Five is a monthly section where we pose five questions to a Computing Reviews featured reviewer. Here are the responses from our May featured reviewer, Benjamin Wells.
Q: What is the most important thing that's happened in computing in the past 10 years?
A: Practical adiabatic quantum computing (AQC). Even with the collapse of Kieu’s ambitious program and D-Wave’s unproven advantage, AQC appeals as a possibly magic carpet.
Q: By the end of your career, where do you think computer science will have taken us? What are you working on that might contribute to that?
A: Already there… But I still expect to contribute to the growing knowledge of pseudorecursive varieties of semigroups. I hope to explore more connections between math and computer-mediated art and more applications of art to teach middle-school math. I look forward to seeing the resolution of P vs. NP (without any help from me), although I wonder what impact it will have either way.
Q: Who is your favorite historical figure? Why?
A: In computing, he’s Alan Turing, the founder of computation theory, computer science, computer engineering, and artificial intelligence; he specified the engineering of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (built too late to be first), and he came close to founding information theory and several other fields. Augusta Ada Byron King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace, is a second choice because she published the first (and first open-source) computer program, for the Analytical Engine, the first universal computer (Harcke, 2004). In life, because he is the first of all, I choose Avatar Meher Baba.
Q: If you weren't working in the computer science field, what would you be doing instead?
A: I would continue to be retired, but my first work is in mathematics and logic, promoted by Hartley Rogers and Alfred Tarski. Computer science was a parallel gift from John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky. I was blessed with nearly 30 years of teaching both math and computer science at two universities.
Q: What is your favorite type of music?
A: Soul music, including that of Mischa Rutenberg and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
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Click here to learn more about him, and here to read one of his recent reviews.
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