Acceptance of the Alan Turing Award by Fernando J. Corbató focuses on computer systems; detailing the challenges of building ambitious systems that are bound to fail. Using examples like football, military warfare, and Boston driving, Corbató explains that the unexpected is inherent in complex systems. He delves into technical failures, like floating point underflow, and programming errors encountered during the development of time-sharing systems like CTSS. An insightful retrospective on CTSS highlights the difficulties of creating interactive software and the lasting impact of persistent online storage. Corbató emphasizes the inevitability of failures in ambitious systems due to the ever-evolving nature of technology.
http://larch-www.lcs.mit.edu:8001/~corbato/turing91/