Wednesday / CS Distinguished Lecture

May 20 / 12:00 PM

Hybrid / Mudd 3514

Speaker

Julio Ottino

Talk Title

From Clocks to Clouds: Computer Science and the New Architecture of Reality

Abstract

"Computer science has become one of the most powerful intellectual forces of our time. It does something no other field quite does: it discovers like science, invents like engineering, and creates like art. In doing so, it has helped build the infrastructure of modern reality--algorithms, platforms, networks, and increasingly, AI systems that shape how billions of people think, interact, and decide.

This talk places computer science on a larger intellectual canvas. It contrasts two ways of seeing the world: one rooted in determinism, decomposition, and control--what we might call the "clock" worldview--and another grounded in emergence, adaptation, and irreducible complexity--the "cloud" worldview. Computer science sits uniquely at the intersection of these modes of thinking.

The field's greatest achievements have come from its mastery of "clock thinking": formalization, algorithms, optimization, and scalable systems. But the world these systems now inhabit--and increasingly create--is a "cloud world": dynamic, interconnected, and only partially predictable.

This mismatch raises a central question: what does computer science need to become when it is not just solving problems, but designing environments--and increasingly, reality itself?

The talk argues that the next phase of the field will require complementing its extraordinary precision with new forms of rigor--tools for navigating uncertainty, reasoning under incomplete models, and designing for emergence rather than control.

Computer science has already shaped the landscape we live in. The question now is whether it will also develop the intellectual frameworks needed to understand--and responsibly guide--the worlds it is creating."

Biography

Julio Mario Ottino is a researcher, engineering scientist, academic leader, educator, artist, and author. He is Founder and Co-Director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, McCormick Institute Professor of Engineering, and Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University. Widely recognized as a world authority on chaos and complexity, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As Dean of Engineering, he launched major university-wide initiatives, programs, degrees, and centers spanning design, energy and sustainability, human-computer interaction, and entrepreneurship. His most recent book is The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World -- The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science (MIT Press, 2022).

Research Areas: complex systems

---

Zoom Link

Panopto Link