Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2013
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Princesses, Dragons, and Assigning Numbers to Stories
I've been working on a prototype story for my thesis project ("Coherent Emergent Stories"). Although I have a couple of stories on the go (such as the one I made for my GRAND poster), the one I am working with now was loosely…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Devices Making Us Dumber
In CIOInsight: Sounds much like the argument being made not so long ago about the use of calculators and before that, slide rules. Were we being dumbed down? Today, though, the difference is that new smart technologies…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brainwashed, the Overreach of Neuroscience
Just received, Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld I was interviewed for this book and read an early version. Will read and remark on in full soon. Their description…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Kenneth and Laurel Appel, In Memoriam
Mapping out the landscape of a proof composite of src1, src2 Kenneth and Laurel Appel, our friend Andrew Appel’s father and sister, passed away in the past two months. Appel senior partnered with Wolfgang Haken and some helpers…
From Schneier on Security
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Risk Perception
From his Facebook page:
An illustration of how the news are largely created, bloated and magnified by journalists. I have been in Lebanon for the past 24h, and there were shells falling on a suburb of Beirut. Yet the news did…From The Eponymous Pickle
Advice for Returning CEOs
Knowledge @ Wharton provides a history and analysis of returning CEOs, see my note on P&G's AG Lafley's return. Asking if the 'Gamble' will pay off. Instructive and interesting.
From Apophenia
Challenges for Health in a Networked Society
From Wild WebMink
Resurgent CDB
Reblogged from Meshed Insights & Knowledge: What does the Woolwich murder teach us about the need for the Communications Data Bill? Nothing at all; the security services seem to have known all about the suspect using existing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Whats New on Lafely's List
In AdAge: I liked the fact that his predecessor, Bob McDonald, seemed to be emphasizing the analytical in finding ways to improve business. Yet soon found that there was little real support for new or sustained capabilities…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics Summit this Friday
Last chance, this Friday .... contact numbers below ... I unfortunately will be out of town, but looks to be good." ... Analytics Summit 2013 will be held on May 31, 8:15AM-5:00PM at the University of Cincinnati. Analytics Summit…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Rise of Mobile Only
In a look at potential C suite users for business intelligence applications we quickly discovered a large number of users that are now mobile only. More than I expected. The rise of the tablet has made this is an increasingly…
From Computational Complexity
Theory Jobs 2013
Time for the annual spring jobs posts. Like last year, I set up a Google Spreadsheet that everyone can edit so we can crowd source who is going where next year. A reminder of the rules I set up separate sheets for faculty, …
From Schneier on Security
The Politics of Security in a Democracy
Terrorism causes fear, and we overreact to that fear. Our brains aren't very good at probability and risk analysis. We tend to exaggerate spectacular, strange and rare events, and downplay ordinary, familiar and common ones. …
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What’s In It For The Company?
Last night there was some chatter on Twitter about news that The World’s First LEGO School Set to Open in Denmark! It’s an interesting idea with a goal to include “LEGO’s emphasis on fun and playful engagement.” The questionwhat…
From The Eponymous Pickle
An Age of Smart Machines
In the Economist: Can we, will the knowledge worker be replaced and when? Kurt Vonnegut is invoked from his novel Piano Player. We certainly believed this in the 1980s. . " ... Two things are clear. The first is that smart…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Crash course in modern economics
I sometimes find it difficult to understand the financial news. So I have written down some notes to help me understand commonly used terms: Austerity: When a government decides to target a deficit that is slightly less than…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Information Insertion at Point of Need
From the BBC: What a good ridiculously simple idea, a sticker applied to Mercedes vehicles that contains a QR code, which directs first responders to rescue methods to extract people from a specific car model. They have put
From The Eponymous Pickle
Designer Storytelling
Artifacts and more in storytelling. You would think that today the universality of information technology would always bring it to the forefront as a required artifact of the storytelling process. Yet there is much more:…
From Putting People First
BBC on exploring and enhancing the TV user experience
The BBC’s R&D department has been working on how to exploit the interactive functionality now available through connected televisions through a number of projects under themes such as companion screens, authentication, Internet…
From Putting People First
Social networks of mobile money in Kenya
Social networks of mobile money in Kenya Sibel Kusimba, Harpieth Chaggar, Elizabeth Gross, & Gabriel Kunyu Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion University of California, Irvine With mobile money technologies…
From Putting People First
A selection from academia.edu
Academia.edu, the platform for academics to share research papers, contains quite a few documents from fields such as design research, experience design and interaction design. Below a selection of the last few months, sorted…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 27 May 2013
Memorial Day in the US today. Today we remember the men and women who have fallen in battle serving their county in the military. My Dad didn’t die in battle though he did serve in the Navy in WW II. He’s in my thoughts today…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fragility and Convexity
Long on my reading list, this essay by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Some fascinating thoughts: " ... The point we will be making here is that logically, neither trial and error nor "chance" and serendipity can be behind the gains…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blogs and Posts
The language log takes on the difference between blogs and posts. To blog and all that. Here I write a post about the subject. All language is fluid, and in these times, with many new ways to exercise the language, it is more…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Language Killing Innovation?
At first I bristled at this. In Innovation excellence, but they make a point about being able to switch between visual and textual language that I have to agree with, at least broadly: " ... Language is a wonderful tool, but…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Trends Driving Technology Innovation
In Innovation Excellence: Trends driving technology innovation. Nothing surprising here, but worth reviewing. All the things they mention have been done for some time, technology has made it easier and thus more broadly available…
From Putting People First
For consumers, an ‘Open Data’ society is a misnomer
Despite all the hoopla about an “open data” society, many consumers are being kept in the dark, writes Natasha Singer in The New York Times. “A few companies are challenging the norm of corporate data hoarding by actually sharing…
From Putting People First
Book: Design For Care – Innovating Healthcare Experience
Design For Care – Innovating Healthcare Experience Peter Jones Rosenfeld Media, 2013 376 pages The world of healthcare is constantly evolving, ever increasing in complexity, costs, and stakeholders, and presenting huge challenges…
From My Biased Coin
An Unusual CS Student Blog
As I'm up working/watching a Memorial Day weekend Arrested Development marathon (OK, I'm not working that hard), I found myself wandering over to Justine Bateman's blog. Like many teens at that time period, I surely had a crush…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Glass Nests
Saw this in Engadget. My colleagues and I worked on the notion of the 'automated' home in the innovation centers. The idea has been around since at least 1990, depending how you define it. Think of it as a hierarchy in the…