Three New Concepts of Future Computer Science

This article presents an observation resulted from the six-year Sino-USA computer science leadership exchanges: the trend towards the emergence of a new computer science that is more universal and fundamental than that in the past. In the 21st century, the field of computer science is experiencing fundamental transformations, from its scope, objects of study, basic metrics, main abstractions, fundamental principles, to its relationship to other sciences and to the human society, while inheriting the basic way of thinking and time-tested body of knowledge accumulated through the past 50 years. We discuss three new concepts related to this trend. They are computational lens and computational thinking articulated by US scientists, and ternary computing for the masses proposed by Chinese scientists. We review the salient features of these concepts, discuss their impact, and summarize future research directions.