Voorjaarsconferentie 1999 KEYNOTE Innovation at Any Cost, A Tale of Evil Empires, Holy Wars and Academic Knights Werner Vogels Dept. of Computer Science, Cornell University <vogels@cs.cornell.edu>

The rivalry in the operating system market place has a severe impact on the daily life. Users are thoroughly confused. IT managers are completely lost. Serious newspapers excel in misinformed articles. Dilbert's mother runs Linux and Al Gore claims to have invented the Internet. In the middle of this turmoil academia could be expected to be the bastion of tranquility where intellection quality and careful deliberation prevails. Unfortunately discussions about operating systems research these days appear to be more like the battlefield of a holy war, with objectivity as its main victim. And we all happily pretend to know where the future will take us .....

I will try to side step the emotional current and have a look at the bottom line of innovation. How new are operating systems these days and what is driving the development of new technology? There must be more than the integration of a web browser with an operating system to prepare us for the future. I was one of the Academic Knights who were accidentally lost for a while in Microsoft's Empire. The journey was dangerous and frightening but has taught me some valuable lessons. In this presentation I will share some my new gained insights on operating systems and their dark future.