by Alex Roland and Philip Shiman. MIT Press, June 2002, ISBN 0-262-18226-2. 440 pages.

This is the story of an extraordinary effort by the U.S. Department of Defense to hasten the advent of "machines that think." From 1983 to 1993, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent an extra $1 billion on computer research aimed at achieving artificial intelligence. The Strategic Computing Initiative (SCI) was conceived as an integrated plan to promote computer chip design and manufacture, computer architecture, and artificial intelligence software. What distinguished SCI from other large-scale technology programs was that it self-consciously set out to advance an entire research front. The SCI succeeded in fostering significant technological successes, even though it never achieved machine intelligence. The goal provided a powerful organizing principle for a suite of related research programs, but it did not solve the problem of coordinating these programs. In retrospect, it is hard to see how it could have.

In Strategic Computing, Alex Roland and Philip Shiman uncover the roles played in the SCI by technology, individuals, and social and political forces. They explore DARPA culture, especially the information processing culture within the agency, and they evaluate the SCI?s accomplishments and set them in the context of overall computer development during this period. Their book is an important contribution to our understanding of the complex sources of contemporary computing.

Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983-1993.

This book paints a picture of the state of the information revolution today and how it will likely progress in the near- to mid-term future (10 to 15 years), focusing separately on different regions of the world—North America, Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa.

The Global Course of the Information Revolution | RAND

] Blame it on geocaching, an Internet-based hide-and-seek
] game that has, just three years after its invention, been
] played by an estimated 250,000 people around the world.
] Roughly 15,000 play in any given week, and the number has
] doubled about every six months

Geocaching getting some more notice.

'Geocaching' buccaneers pursue hidden bounty throughout Bay Area as GPS-based game catches on

Several chapters from this book are freely available in PDF. Here are the titles:

* Building a Multiuser Sequence Analysis Facility Using Freeware
* Flexible Sequence Similarity Searching with the FASTA3 Program Package
* Annonating Sequence Data Using Genotator
* Computer Resources for the Clinical and Molecular Geneticist
* Computing with DNA
* Design and Implementation of an Introductory Course for Computer Applications in Molecular Biology and Genetics

Bioinformatics Methods and Protocols | Humana Press

"Officially organized in 1995 and existing informally for several years prior, The Bioperl Project is an international association of developers of open source Perl tools for bioinformatics, genomics and life science research. "

Perl rulez!

bio.perl.org

"As chairwoman of the inaugural IEEE Computer Society Bioinformatics Conference, held at Stanford University last week, Markstein is trying to recruit the leading minds of computer science into what she calls "the industrial revolution of biology," an anticipated period of discovery resulting from the analysis of genomic information. "

Biology Seeks a Few Good Geeks

"This article will examine why a biologist would want to learn to program. There are two main reasons: scientific, and economic. I hope that the discussion will also be of some use to programmers thinking of entering the bioinformatics field. But first, I'll take a short tour of some history, define some terms, and make some general comments about how programming fits into biology research."

Interesting article written by the guy who wrote my "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics" O'Reilly book.

www.oreilly.com -- Why Biologists Want to Program Computers

"Many of the important bioinformatics applications that previously existed only for Unix platforms are now being brought over to the Macintosh, thanks to Mac OS X and its Unix underpinnings."

One of many reasons why I want a Mac OSX system. I know this article is old...but as it is new and relevant to me, I thought I would meme it:)

O'Reilly Network: Bioinformatics Meets Mac OS X [Dec. 14, 2001]

] The journal will accept basic and applied papers dealing
] both with Engineering, Physics, Chemistry and Computer
] Science and with Biology and Medicine with respect to
] bio-molecules and cells. The content of acceptable papers
] ranges from practical/clinical/environmental applications
] to formalized mathematical theory. Themes will include:
]
] Biocompatibility of materials; Tissue engineering aspects
] at the nano and micro scale; Molecular and biomolecular
] sensors and electronics; Nano and microtechnology for the
] study of bio-molecules and cells; Computer methods for
] nanobioscience; Bioinformatics and biocomputing;
] DNA computing; and more.

IEEE Transactions on NanoBioscience

In life-sciences establishments around the world, the laboratory rat is giving way to the computer mouse—as computing joins forces with biology to create a bioinformatics market that is expected to be worth nearly $40 billion within three years

Bioinformatics - the new Telecom