Communications of the ACM
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From BLOG@CACM
Information Privacy: Changing Norms and Expectations
That picture of you at a family reunion, squinting into the sun, can rarely be delimited by a physical location once it is placed on the web. Instead, information...
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
Works in Progress: MIA
It is time we extracted a sample of cultural DNA from computing's history and engineered a new generation of contemplative, informal workshops. After gestation,...
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
Simple HPC Wins
You want to be the first person to design a successful, transistorized computer system, not the last person to design vacuum tube computer. Any designer's challenge...
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
Research Summers
Research challenges us to pose new questions, choose exploratory avenues carefully, and be frugal and wise stewards of the financial trust invested in us.
From BLOG@CACM
Consumerization of IT and Research
When a corporate, government, or university IT department of the 1970s debated an upgrade to its IBM S/370 mainframes, it is doubtful that the IT director was in...
From BLOG@CACM
Presentations, Humor, and Memes
I have been reflecting on the nature of technical presentations. Public speaking can be great fun. When done well, it is a form of performance art. Enjoy it, and...
From BLOG@CACM
Paucity to Plethora: Jevons Paradox
I suspect much of computing is still socially conditioned by its roots in computational paucity to recognize fully the true opportunity afforded by computational...
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
SC09 Reflections: The Need For Speed
SC09 (aka the “Supercomputing Conference”) was held during the week of November 16. The conference set an attendance record this year – roughly 10,000 attendees...
From BLOG@CACM
Consilience: The Path to Innovation
I believe solutions to many of the most challenging problems facing our society – medicine and health care, climate and the environment, economic security and privacy...
From BLOG@CACM
Cray and Fernbach Award Winners
This year, I have the honor and privilege to chair the selection committee for the Seymour Cray and Sidney Fernbach awards, which recognize outstanding contributions...
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