To The Moon And Back: Taking The Leap Towards Solving Big Problems – Front Porch Front-End Developer Conference, Dallas, TX

Presented by Julia Elman

 The Past

• 1960: The Cultural Decade
• Kennedy “get to the moon” speech
• 1969 moon landing
• New found awareness (earth’s atmosphere, etc.)
  • 1970 – EPA founded, Comprehensive clean air act, Earth Day founded
  • 1971 – Doctors without borders
  • 1972 – DDT was banned
  • “We went to the moon, but discovered the Earth for the first time.”

The Present

MIT Technology Review – You promised me Mars colonies, instead I got Facebook. (Buzz Aldrin)

Why aren’t we solving global problems with technology any more? We tend to over-engineer solutions.

Malaria, Cancer, etc.

We can solve big problems with 3 things aligned.

1. Our institution supports solutions
2. We actually understand the problem
3. Active political leader and public working together to solve the problem.

The Future

Education – Logo programming on Apple IIe

Computational Thinking allows us to solve big problems

• decomposition
• pattern recognition
• algorithmic design