To view the relationship between computing and science as a one-way street is mostly untrue today, argues Ian Foster, and will be even less true by 2020.
A growing number of sciences, from atmospheric modelling to genomics, would not exist in their current form if it were not for computers. A simplistic analysis of this relationship focuses on hardware, and sees science as largely a passive beneficiary of the computing industry's relentless innovation, acquiring and applying to its own ends the fastest computers, largest disks and most capable sequencing machines. In this view, science and computing (as an intellectual discipline) have little to say to each other: it is the computer industry that drives the advances that have an impact on science.
