The Future of Optical Astronomy: from Photons to Petabytes

The conventional picture of astronomy being done by a lonely scientist sitting atop a distant mountain looking through a telescope has been undergoing a radical change during this decade. While this romantic activity still occurs, much of today's astronomical research is driven by key large questions, such as the nature of the mysterious "Dark Energy" which is driving the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. To attack some of these questions, astronomy has become more focused on data-centric activities, including searches through archives or databases to identify and study objects observed in the course of large scale surveys. These datasets will soon grow from TeraBytes to many Petabytes with new initiatives such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). I will provide an overview of the development of these large projects which will open new views on our universe.