IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2015 - 27

Institute for Media Technology at Technical University of Ilmenau.
In addition, he is the director of the Fraunhofer Institute for
Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau. Brandenburg is a
fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) along with Herr
Bowersock, Josh Andreason, and Abraham White. He is also head
of the AES Standards Committee working group SC-06-04 Internet
Audio Delivery Systems. He has been granted 27 U.S. patents as a
coinventor; all patents have multiple inventors.
Topics: to be announced.
Bob Frankston
Areas of expertise: software, electrical
engineering, business, and much more
over the last half century.
Biography
Bob Frankston is a fellow of the ACM
and the Computer History Museum. He
is on the Board of Governors of the IEEE CE Society and writes
the "Bits Versus Electrons" column in IEEE Consumer Electronics
Magazine. He earned his master's and engineer's degrees
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in electrical
engineering and computer science. His career has been devoted
to empowering people to take advantage of computing and
connectivity. He wrote the first electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc.
At Microsoft he was instrumental in connecting home users with
the rest of the Internet. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Title: "Consumer Electronics in the Age of the Internet"
Abstract: The CE industry is in transition from an age in which
we created value in hardware to one in which we create value
using software. Traditionally, value has been created in a tightly
engineered environment, like television, with every part tuned
to the precise requirements of an amazing feat of engineering.
Today, we use generic hardware and video as simply another
data type. This has major implications for the traditional CE
industry, as Frankston wrote in his first column (http://rmf.vc/
IEEERestructuringCE).
Title: "Public Policy for Connectivity"
Abstract: Today's Internet is a discontinuity from traditional
networking. The CE industry needs connectivity as a resource
rather than being limited to what is profitable to providers
and gatekeepers. In the heyday of telecommunications, we
depended on carriers to maintain paths (circuits) between two
end points, much like railroads maintain rails. Just as railroads
offered rides as a service, telecommunications carriers offered
transportation as a service. In the United States, we created the
ICC and the Federal Communications Commission to manage
these service industries as quasi-utilities. Today, we use generic
connectivity (the Internet) and can focus on the relationship
between two devices decoupled from the infrastructure. We only
ask for a "best-efforts" transit of packets and then adapt our
applications to the opportunities available.
Title: "Stories"
Abstract: "Back when I was a kid"...a half century of
discovery and learning and creating. I happened to grow up
just as the new digital technologies were being developed, and
my programming skills became more important than my ability

to wield a soldering iron. I learned to program in 1963, and my
first job, while still in high school, was helping to create the first
online financial information service in 1966. I've been online
from home doing personal computing since then. This has
given me the vantage from which to observe and contribute to
the transformations over the last half century. It's been lots of
fun, but it also gives me perspective to question what we take
for granted because it's all a work in progress.
Title: "Bits Versus Electronics"
Abstract: Other topics from my column and other writings. I
plan to post a summary of my columns at http://rmf.vc/IEEECES.
Kees Immink
Areas of expertise: software, electrical
engineering, business, and much more
over the last half century.
Biography
Kees Immink is president and founder
of Turing Machines, Inc., and an adjunct
professor at the Institute for Experimental Mathematics, Essen,
Germany. Immink, who earned his Ph.D. degree from the
Eindhoven University of Technology, has progressed the digital
audio revolution from its very beginning. Over the course of his
career, he has contributed to the development of a wealth of
digital recording products, including the CD, DAT, DCC, DVD, and
the Blu-ray disc. Immink is a recipient of the AES Gold Medal,
IEEE Edison Medal, IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics
Award, SMPTE Progress Medal, Eduard Rhein Prize, and a
personal Emmy Award.
Title: "Beethoven, Shannon, and the Compact Disc"
Abstract: An audio compact disc (CD) holds up to 74 min, 33 s
of sound, just enough for a complete mono recording of Ludwig
von Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (Alle Menschen werden
Brüder) at probably the slowest pace it as ever been played
during the Bayreuther Festspiele in 1951 conducted by Wilhelm
Furtwängler. Each second of music requires about 1.5 million b,
which are represented as tiny pits and lands ranging from 0.9 to
3.3 mm in length. More than 19 billion channel bits are recorded
as a spiral track of alternating pits and lands of 5.38 km (3.34 mi)
scanned at walking speed, 4.27 km/h. We will discuss the various
crucial technical decisions made that would determine the
technical success or failure of the new medium.
Ulrich Reimers
Areas of expertise: a pioneer of digital
television and digital video broadcasting
(DVB), his current research interest
is "building bridges" between wireless
broadband and broadcast. Systems that
his team invented are dynamic broadcast,
tower overlay over LTE-A+, or redundancy on demand.
Biography
Ulrich H. Reimers studied communication engineering at
Technische Universitaet Braunschweig, Germany. Following
research at the university's Institutfuer Nachrichtentechnik

october 2015

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IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2015
