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Capt. Grace Hopper on Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People (Part One, 1982)

National Security Agency

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  • Recommended by 3 people: 2 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
  • Presented by Capt. Grace Hopper

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

179K views2 years ago3 recommendations

History and cultureComputer scienceHistory of computingPeople who shaped computingCPUs and computer architecture

Grace Hopper delivers a 1982 lecture at the NSA discussing the future of data, hardware, software, scaling, and the famous nanosecond demonstration.

Part One of "Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People" presented by Capt. Grace Hopper at NSA in 1982.

Why it's here

3 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as an entertaining and historically significant lecture by a computing pioneer.

legoktmon Lobsters • Recommends

Capt. Grace Hopper on Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People (1982) Part 2: link to this video

joshstrangeon Hacker News • Recommends

On “NSA releases 1982 Grace Hopper lecture”

I can't wait to watch this later. I watched just a few minutes starting at this timestamp 0 (it was linked in another comment) and it was gold, I love her sense of humor. 0 link to this video

joschuaantareson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What is your favourite tech talk?”

I find Grace Hopper's lectures very entertaining, even though they seem to come from a bygone era when viewed from today's perspective. link to this video link

scrlkon Hacker News • Mentions

On “NSA releases 1982 Grace Hopper lecture”

Great quote at 45:26 regarding vertical vs. horizontal scaling: link to this video > "Now back in the early days of this country, when they moved heavy objects around, they didn't have any Caterpillar tractors, they didn't have any big cranes. They used oxen. And when they got a great big log on the ground, and one ox couldn't budge the darn thing, they did not try to grow a bigger ox. They used two oxen! And I think they're trying to tell us something. When we need greater computer power, the answer is not "get a bigger computer", it's "get another computer". Which of course, is what common sense would have told us to begin with."

interroboinkon Hacker News • Mentions

On “NSA releases 1982 Grace Hopper lecture”

…we need is more oxen." It limits one's imagination. That's the essence of what I've been advocating against in this thread, though perhaps my attempts and examples have merely chummed your waters. Ironically, I'd say Grace Hopper rather agrees, elsewhere in the linked talk1. > Faster CPUs aren’t coming. Not with that attitude, ya dingus (: 1 " link to this video I think the saddest phrase I ever hear in a computer installation is that horrible one "but we've always done it that way." That's a forbidden phrase in my office.…

gregw2on Hacker News • Mentions

On “NSA releases 1982 Grace Hopper lecture”

You can go to the Youtube page for the video: link to this video ( or link for part 2) click on the "...more" link in the video description, then click on the "Show Transcript" button further down that appears and you will see a transcript in the upper right of your screen which you can scroll through and read.

jp42on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Satellites Spotting Aircraft”

"Those satellite photographs -- the landsat photographs -- are so darn good that when they re fully enhanced by computer, we can actually tell how high the waves are out in the middle of the Pacific; we can tell what the temperature of the ocean is 20 feet below.." - Grace Hopper in 1982 NSA lecture. YT link: link to this video I bet current spy satellite will be doing a lot things we can hardly imagine, may be we will know in 40-50 years down the line.

throw0101bon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Copper is Faster than Fiber (2017) [pdf]”

> Light speed is ~3ns per metre, so maybe the lowered speed through the fibre? Obligatory Adm. Grace Hopper nanosecond reference: * link to this video