Communications of the ACM
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From BLOG@CACM
My Scientific Big Data Are Lonely
Although there are daunting technical challenges posed by big data in science and engineering, the social and economic challenges are just as difficult, though...
From BLOG@CACM
No, Maybe, Yes, Obviously: Telling the Future the Past
The Kubler-Ross model of the stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — is sometimes an apt description of the culture change required...
From BLOG@CACM
All Grown Up Now: Service and Serial Reciprocity
Computing is central to the debate about so many aspects of our present and future that we have a duty and responsibility to be active and enthusiastic participants...
From BLOG@CACM
SC11: The Cray, Fernbach, and Kennedy Awards
The Cray, Fernbach, and Kennedy awards and the work of the recipients reflect the evolving interplay of technology, software, applications and algorithms in advancing...
From BLOG@CACM
Why We Compute
Why do we, as researchers and practitioners, have this deep and abiding love of computing? Why do we compute? I suspect it is a deeper, more primal yearning, one...
From BLOG@CACM
Explaining Science and Engineering
As I have followed the international news regarding the Japanese disaster, I have been struck by the challenges each news organization has faced in explaining technical...
From BLOG@CACM
Intellectual Amplification via Computing
As the recent performance of IBM's Watson system on the game show Jeopardy! illustrated, the combination of large-scale data, rich algorithm suites and powerful...
From BLOG@CACM
2010 Seymour Cray and Sidney Fernbach Awards
This year, I again had the honor and privilege to chair the selection committee for the IEEE Seymour Cray and Sidney Fernbach awards, both of which were presented...
From BLOG@CACM
HPC and the Excluded Middle
Betwixt and between ubiquitous consumer software and the ethereal realm of ultra-high-performance computing, lies the excluded middle, the world of day-to-day computational...
From BLOG@CACM
Technology Transfer: A Contact Sport
The success or failure of technology transfer depends on many factors. No single mechanism is guaranteed to succeed, though there are many mechanisms that are likely...
From BLOG@CACM
Remembering Internet Dogs
An iconic cartoon by Peter Steiner, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1993, captured the nature of the nascent Internet. It shows a dog seated at a computer,...
From BLOG@CACM
In Vivo, In Vitro, In Silico
These “grand challenges” of systems biology encompass almost every aspect of modern computing, from numerical and symbolic methods through data management and analytics...
From BLOG@CACM
The Ghosts of Holiday Shopping: Past, Present and Future
In many parts of the western world, the frenzy of holiday shopping has reached its crescendo. With apologies to Charles Dickens, it is instructive to consider...
From BLOG@CACM
Smart Grids: Getting Personal
How many electronic devices do you own? It is tempting to answer, “Just a handful,” but the truth is much more nuanced. Here’s a simple experiment that will (quite...
From BLOG@CACM