Daniel A. Reed, a world-renowned authority on high-performance computing, will offer a glimpse of 2016 and the wonders (and annoyances) that new technologies are likely to bring over the next decade in a presentation Tuesday, May 30, on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.

Reed, director of the Renaissance Computing Institute, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology Services at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Chancellor’s Eminent Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, will speak at 1:30 p.m. at Peabody Hall, room 104. The lecture, titled “Computing the Future: Release 2016,” will speculate on technology advances over the next decade and their potential impacts on everything from education to healthcare to entertainment. Will wearable and embedded medical sensors mean healthier, longer lives for an aging population? Will global electronic social networks shape our perceptions of reality and create the global village that  Marshall McLuhan predicted? And what will be the role of the university in a world of ubiquitous sensors, artificial intelligence and global wireless communications?

As director of an institute that pushes collaboration to a new level and as a university IT leader that believes technology and technologists must partner with academic and business communities to create the learning environments of the future, Reed does not believe in passively allowing the future to happen. Instead, he advocates aggressively inventing the future and using technology to reach and exceed expectations. In this presentation, he will describe some visions of a technology-enriched future—driven by new inventions, by national and international policies, and by global competition—and their applicability to North Carolina.

The one-hour talk will be followed by a question and answer session. It is free and open to the public.