Alex Wissner-Gross | TEDxBeaconStreet
The performance of a wide variety of globally-distributed online activities is increasingly limited by the finite speed of light. Dr. Wissner-Gross recently introduced technology for partially mitigating the impact of this limitation on the coordination of geographically distributed activities, such as virtual worlds, currency exchanges, telepresence, and remote surgery. His solution involves positioning computer servers in optimal intermediate locations such as oceans and other network-sparse regions, opening the possibility of geographic remoteness becoming a new form of natural resource for developing countries in the next decade.
Dr. Alexander D. Wissner-Gross is an award-winning scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur. He serves as an Institute Fellow at the Harvard University Institute for Applied Computational Science and as a Research Affiliate at the MIT Media Laboratory.