The last session at this year's conference is an interactive panel discussion facilitated by Prof. Mitch Resnick from MIT Media Lab. The closing panel consists of leading university and industry researchers with strong opinions about digital technology and its relation to children and childhood. The topic for this session is the general question for this year's conference: "How can interaction with digital creative tools support child development?" The panel reflects on theoretical frameworks and challenges for the design of new digital technologies for a new generation of children, discussing new trajectories to support children's learning, wellbeing, and sensemaking. Panelists draw upon ideas from the papers, demos, tutorials, and keynotes presented at the IDC 2014 conference. IDC delegates have the opportunity to join the conversation, posing their own questions and comments. The closing panel concludes IDC 2014 by sharing ideas on how we can build tomorrow's technology together.

Everybody loves a good story. People all over the world seek out and crave entertainment. This will not change in the coming age of big data and cloud computing. But stories are more than just a distraction from the big problems of the world we are all supposed to be solving. Stories are (computationally) one of the most challenging problems facing our computers. Humans are hardcoded for story. Our computers are not. Or not yet. Through our research we examine a future of entertainment where increasing computational power allows us to be genuinely connected to a truly digital world. We argue that a genuinely digital and connected future opens the door for a new kind of storytelling, and ultimately, a new way of managing and interacting with the massive data sets collected and shared by humans.

Computer security courses typically cover a breadth of technical topics, including threat modeling, applied cryptography, software security, and Web security. The technical artifacts of computer systems - and their associated computer security risks and defenses - do not exist in isolation, however; rather, these systems interact intimately with the needs, beliefs, and values of people. This is especially true as computers become more pervasive, embedding themselves not only into laptops, desktops, and the Web, but also into our cars, medical devices, and toys. Therefore, in addition to the standard technical material, we argue that students would benefit from developing a mindset focused on the broader societal and contextual issues surrounding computer security systems and risks. We used science fiction (SF) prototyping to facilitate such societal and contextual thinking in a recent undergraduate computer security course. We report on our approach and experiences here, as well as our recommendations for future computer security and other computer science courses.

This paper is meant to be an introduction both to the short story “Nebulous Mechanisms” as well as the concept of science fiction prototypes. In the tradition of the legendary Isaac Asimov, we jump into the long and symbiotic history of science fact and science fiction. Briskly we move through current work in the field and delve into the particulars of the craft of combining current scientific research, theory and practice with the fictional construct of the science fiction story. Finally we look into the specifics of the story “Nebulous Mechanisms” and conclude with the challenge to employ the science fiction prototype to foster innovation and explore the boundaries of modern science.