Objects were first introduced to mirror our understanding of the world within computational processes. But computation is a boat that sails in a sea of data, and, these days, that sea is a massive ocean. In churning data, is there still time for the nuance of objects? In this talk, I revisit the history of object-oriented programming, focusing, in particular, on what happens at the edge of computation and the data it consumes and produces.

Cristina (Crista) Lopes is a Professor of Informatics in the School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and Director of the Institute for Software Research at UC Irvine. Her research focuses on software engineering and programming languages for large-scale data and systems. Early in her career, she was a founding member of the team at Xerox PARC that developed Aspect-Oriented Programming. Along with her research program, she is also a prolific software developer. Her open source contributions include being one of the core developers of OpenSimulator, a virtual world server. She is also a founder and consultant of Encitra, a company specializing in online virtual reality for early-stage sustainable urban redevelopment projects. Her book “Exercises in Programming Style” has gained rave reviews, including being chosen as “Notable Book” by the ACM Best of Computing reviews. She has a PhD from Northeastern University, and MS and BS degrees from Instituto Superior Tecnico in Portugal. She is the recipient of several awards, including a prestigious CAREER Award and a Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest.