U.S. Navy computer scientist and COBOL inventor Grace Hopper gave a famed lecture in 1982 that was recorded using an obsolete video medium for which no player now exists. Yesterday, the NSA posted it on its YouTube channel, reflecting years of demand for it to be made public and work by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to retrieve the footage: "NARA's Special Media Department was able to retrieve the footage contained on two 1' AMPEX tapes and transferred the footage to NSA to be reviewed for public release."
In one of the more unique public proactive transparency record releases for the National Security Agency (NSA) to date, NSA has released a digital copy of a lecture that then-Capt. Grace Hopper gave agency employees on August 19, 1982.
The lecture, "Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People," features Capt. Hopper discussing some of the potential future challenges of protecting information. She also provided valuable insight on leadership and her experiences breaking barriers in the fields of computer science and mathematics.
Here's the lecture, in two parts.
A fantastic quote:
"Now back in the early days of this country, when they moved heavy objects around, they didn't have any Caterpillar tractors, they didn't have any big cranes. They used oxen. And when they got a great big log on the ground, and one ox couldn't budge the darn thing, they did not try to grow a bigger ox. They used two oxen! And I think they're trying to tell us something. When we need greater computer power, the answer is not "get a bigger computer", it's "get another computer". Which of course, is what common sense would have told us to begin with."
