Internet godfather David Farber, the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems, told a full Alumni Hall in the Towne Building on Feb. 24 that universities in the information age must be prepared for technology-aided advances such as multi-institutional seminars, international rump sessions among students, and key lectures from afar.

Farber is the first academic from the University to speak to the School of Engineering and Applied Science's Technology, Business and Government Distinguished Lecture series this year.

Farber said the evolution of computing has changed how the university must consider technology, which now enables institutions to utilize and produce vast amounts of data without using traditional means. "The history of computing's convergence in business and industry initially was access to other machines. Now it's access to information," he said.

Farber instead expressed confidence in humans' capacity to use technology properly. "Unless history changes, we will find something to do with it."

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